An eye-opening look at how bad leaders—one in particular—rely on bad followers.
A pointed, dispiriting examination of the rings of supporters who surrounded Donald Trump and abetted his countless misdeeds.
The Germans of the Third Reich are the textbook case of those who “were only following orders,” writes Kellerman, who was the founding executive director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. Hitler could not have carried out his horrific campaigns without layers of willing enablers—“followers who allow or even encourage their leaders to engage in, and then to persist in behaviors that are destructive.” Though the author notes that Trump was no Hitler, he was undoubtedly a destructive, feckless, and ultimately failed leader. Kellerman examines the circles of powerful men and women who surrounded Trump by virtue of professing loyalty to him, a requirement for access—along with physical attractiveness, Kellerman adds, in the case of inner-inner circle members such as Ivanka Trump and Hope Hicks. With that loyalty came the fervent suspension of disbelief and surrender to the lies and fear by which Trump wielded power. Kellerman goes on to examine Trump’s base, made up of segments of the electorate who shared in common Whiteness and fear of losing what can only be described as White privilege—even though so many of its members are far from privileged. Most provocatively, the author delivers a scathing critical exam of the people who assisted Trump as he blundered his way through the pandemic. One who receives praise is Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who realized he was being played at the famous Bible-in-front-of-the-church episode and who “made as loud and clear as he could without crossing the line into insubordination that he viewed Trump’s leadership as deeply if not fatally flawed.” And one who comes in for close questioning is Anthony Fauci, who, Kellerman suggests, did harm by not “being more direct, less circumspect, less political.”
An eye-opening look at how bad leaders—one in particular—rely on bad followers.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-108-83832-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Cambridge Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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