A capable, eye-opening account of laissez faire financial laws and practices that serve the interest of criminals alone.
A revealing look at the web of financial chicanery that puts the U.S. at the head of places in which to hide ill-gotten gains.
Where to go when you’ve robbed your citizens blind or sold a boatload of Fentanyl? Not Turks and Caicos or Liberia or Bermuda: No, the thing to do is cultivate the right kinds of allies, financial and political, in the U.S., and voilà, money laundered and riches secured. Financial journalist Michel serves up his first exhibit: Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue, a son of the murderous Equatorial Guinean dictator, who spent mountains of his compatriots’ money on mansions and, in time, Michael Jackson collectibles even as those compatriots starved. His vast fortune was not technically illegal, owing to laws his father promulgated. As Michel chronicles, to protect it, Teodorin went to “a country that had perfected the biggest system of transforming dirty, suspect money into perfectly legitimate finances and assets, obscuring its illicit origins in the process.” That’d be the U.S., where Ukrainian crime lords, Colombian cartel leaders, and their ilk have found a welcome haven. Criminal cash was ever more welcome with the presidency of Donald Trump, whose “efforts to dismantle America’s anticorruption program took place almost as soon as he entered the White House.” The author shows how Trump figured out all kinds of ways to skim the flood of illegal cash that flowed into the country—e.g., selling one of his Trump Tower apartments to the daughter of another African dictator who, like most of Trump’s business associates, operated behind a shell corporation. Michel’s diligent dissection is maddening to read, all the more so when he recounts how nonprofits and universities flock to accept dirty money in exchange for bestowing legitimacy on donors. Happily, since Biden came into office, the tide has turned, but the kleptocracy of which Michel writes, which “can be understood…as capitalism as its worst,” will be difficult to uproot.
A capable, eye-opening account of laissez faire financial laws and practices that serve the interest of criminals alone.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-27452-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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