Astute political history.
Isolationism, long in the doghouse, gets a reprieve.
Enshrined by George Washington’s iconic farewell address, isolationism enjoyed a long and dignified history until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. For the remainder of the 20th century, “isolationist” became a synonym for “simpleton.” Then, seemingly overnight, “America First,” the rallying cry of a disgraced 1930s anti-war movement, became a campaign slogan and helped elect the current president. Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown, writes that isolationism dominated American foreign relations until 1898, when the country dipped a toe in internationalism. President William McKinley’s realistic version in the Spanish-American War was too much about projecting power. Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic internationalism was too much about spreading freedom. However, unlike the unhappy post-mortem after 1918, Americans emerged from World War II with a surge of national confidence in what seemed like an ideal combination of both realism and idealism. Galvanized by anti-communism, both political parties embraced what Kupchan calls liberal internationalism: projecting power throughout the world but aiming at preserving democratic ideals. He maintains that, despite glitches, America performed tolerably at leading the “free world” until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, after which the U.S. lost its sense of proportion. What Kupchan terms “overreach” led to “188 military interventions, a four-fold increase over the Cold War era” that included multitrillion dollar debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Barack Obama’s 2008 election introduced “liberal internationalism lite,” which encouraged American allies to share the burden, but this failed to obtain bipartisan support. The author concludes that isolationism was growing well before the 2016 election. America can never withdraw to the solitude it enjoyed during the 19th century, but there’s no denying that the modern version is a movement whose time has come. Histories of ideas are often boring, but Kupchan writes well and only occasionally falls into the academic mode, mostly when he delivers an opinion and then follows it with a quote from another scholar who backs him up.
Astute political history.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-939302-2
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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 Yorkerstaff 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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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