A smart assessment of a presidency marked, the author argues, by blatant disregard for law, custom, and democracy.
In which the Donald is recast as the don—as in Gotti, Corleone, et al.
Former U.S. attorney McQuade knows corruption: She successfully prosecuted former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for racketeering, earning him a 28-year prison term. In office, President Trump commuted the sentence. What favor Trump earned for that, we don’t know, but McQuade assures us that the transactional president doesn’t do anything for anyone without expecting something in return. When he granted clemency for the convicted Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, for instance, he expected Cuellar to switch parties to the Republican side—tearing into Cuellar’s decision not to run and his “lack of LOYALTY.” In this, as in the opening of The Godfather, McQuade writes, Trump demands payback, maybe now, maybe later. By her account, Trump has made a specialty of using his office for his own enrichment: “And just like John Gotti, he was doing it in broad daylight. Trump seemed to know that, like a mob boss, the more he got away with, the more untouchable he appeared to be.” A president covers a lot more territory than a mafioso, of course: Trump’s dismantling of federal departments, razing DEI standards, and waging war without congressional approval are far beyond the purview of organized crime. Yet the cruelty and corruption that McQuade chronicles are of a piece, speaking to mob-style governance that leverages “public power for personal benefit.” To battle the lawlessness she perceives, she offers a multifaceted program of resistance, from turning out in number at events such as “No Kings” rallies to waging satire (“Laughing at a tyrant, of course, undermines his authority”), and, most important of all, voting and otherwise refusing to acquiesce. All of these are useful, but McQuade also suggests that the mobocracy will collapse under its own weight, brought down by corruption and sycophancy.
A smart assessment of a presidency marked, the author argues, by blatant disregard for law, custom, and democracy.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9781644215555
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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