A must-read. The gun’s not quite smoking, but the barrel’s plenty hot, and there are Russian shell casings all around.
Is Donald Trump a Russian asset? Yes, according to longtime president-watcher and journalist Unger, who builds on and extends the case he built in House of Trump, House of Putin.
It’s not news that well before becoming president, Trump revealed himself to be “a tyrant who had mesmerized tens of millions of people, and that it didn’t matter to them what he said or did”—or that he has long been suspected of owing a profound debt to Russia and that the place to look for it is in the tax returns he keeps hidden. Unger’s book is valuable primarily because he connects any number of loose ends, even if the result may sound like a conspiracy theory. Point 1: Trump owes Russia big, and while in office, he was ever eager to please. Point 2: Russia began to cultivate him long before the Soviet Union collapsed. Point 3: It all comes down to money. Point 4: There are connections among Opus Dei, the Trump administration, and the “world of decadence and depravity tied to figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.” Unger links all of this to what CIA sources call the “Monster Plot,” which posits that Russia placed an asset or agent “at the very top” of the U.S. government to make it collapse. Trump was ideal. As one Russian handler noted, “in terms of his personality…the guy is not a complicated cookie, his most important characteristics being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This combination makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter.” The believability of Unger’s case lies less in these points laid bare than in the fact that one can see them in abundant evidence in the actions of Trump and his allies, from leaving Syria to Russia to packing the Supreme Court and Justice Department with right-wing Catholics—nefarious work that will take years to undo even as Trump continues to attempt to bring about “the end of democracy.”
A must-read. The gun’s not quite smoking, but the barrel’s plenty hot, and there are Russian shell casings all around.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18253-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
IN THE NEWS
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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