A welcome reminder, in a time of growing repression, of the power of well-placed dissent.
A professor of constitutional law and politics recounts how popular protest and democratic institutions have restrained authoritarian-inclined presidents.
According to Brettschneider, author of The Oath and the Office, five presidents preceded Trump in antidemocratic behavior. John Adams actively prosecuted journalists who uncovered various misdoings under his administration. Furthermore, he cooked up a scheme to deny his opponent in the 1800 election, Thomas Jefferson, the electoral votes needed to take office. James Buchanan worked with allies in the Supreme Court to quash efforts to extend constitutional personhood to Black Americans by means of the Dred Scott decision, among other acts. Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson were advocates of white supremacy, while Richard Nixon…well, his crimes are well known. The resistance to these presidents came from many quarters. As the author chronicles, journalists such as Ida Wells wrote vigorously in defense of First Amendment issues, while Frederick Douglass opposed both Buchanan and Johnson in ways that Martin Luther King Jr. would learn from a century later, “marking anti-tyranny as an animating principle of American government” in the process. As Brettschneider examines the legal cases surrounding many of these developments, he often reconsiders precedent. For example, he suggests that too much importance has been attached to Brown v. Board of Education; nonetheless, the decision was critical because it validated earlier efforts to press the Equal Protection Clause, by which, some years earlier, Harry Truman had desegregated the military, “not just acting morally but…fulfilling a constitutional duty.” As Brettschneider notes in closing, the dissent cuts both ways: Trump, too, had his “citizen readers” of the Constitution, but their ill intent was to find ways to keep him in power by, among other things, storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.
A welcome reminder, in a time of growing repression, of the power of well-placed dissent.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781324006275
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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 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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