A solid case for restructuring a neglected and neglectful agency whose job is too important to admit laxity.
Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporter Leonnig paints a damning portrait of a federal agency in crisis.
The Secret Service was born after the failure of a bodyguard to protect Abraham Lincoln from an assassin’s bullet. The agency’s mission should be simple, but it has become mired in morale problems, malfeasance, and poor leadership. It has regularly “been ranked as the most hated place to work in the federal government,” a fiefdom of clashing bosses who demand personal loyalty, in exchange for which they’re willing to look the other way on certain matters. In a seamy example, while on duty in Cartagena, agents solicited prostitutes, some of whom were revealed to have cartel connections. The agency is necessary, as Leonnig easily demonstrates by citing statistics surrounding threats to Barack Obama, which earned him protection a full year ahead of his formal eligibility as a candidate. Yet, as the author writes, the Secret Service is shot through with unacknowledged racism—e.g., a noose hanging in a room used by a Black instructor was attributed to “one bad apple, not to the existence of a larger problem.” Moreover, it is thoroughly politicized; MAGA hats were regularly seen on agents’ desks during the Trump years, and some cheered on the Jan. 6 insurrectionaries. Leonnig charges that, against regulations, one agent became involved with Tiffany Trump. Meanwhile, the president himself “sometimes acted as if he were the head of personnel decisions at the Service,” trying to have the leader of his wife’s protective detail removed because he “was bothered by the chunky heels she wore on the job.” In a supreme irony, he complained of overweight agents as well. While the presidential detail has since been purged, and the agency is not paying exorbitant rent to enrich the occupant of the White House, “the Service remains spread dangerously thin” and, it seems, scarcely able to perform its mission.
A solid case for restructuring a neglected and neglectful agency whose job is too important to admit laxity.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-399-58901-0
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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