Clear revelations about how abuse of congressional power and political dysfunction have never been so egregious.
An up-close look at the "clown show" of right-wing extremists who continue to fail to govern in Congress.
Washington Post columnist Milbank, a veteran Capitol Hill observer and author of The Deconstructionists and O Is for Obama, resolved to limit his journalistic focus to the House of Representatives. His weekly essays from 2023 to early 2024 form the basis of this collection, enhanced by additional reporting, analysis, and context. The author presents the chaos, incompetence, and self-created crises in the House in three parts: Disinformation, Dysfunction, and Disunion. He explains how GOP gerrymandering created House seats from uncompetitive districts, enabling the "craziest SOBs" to hold the balance of power. Anyone following the past two years of national news will remember the lowlights: Kevin McCarthy's path to the Speakership over 15 ballots and capitulation to the "fringiest elements of the right wing"; the near-default on the federal debt, "playing chicken with the American economy”; threats of government shutdown; the only speaker ousted in U.S. history; and the resulting three-week “free-for-all” search for a new speaker. Election denier Mike Johnson has created his own record of failure and dysfunction, killing a bipartisan border deal and endangering U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel. Much else from this dismal era of congressional misrule will be familiar to citizens who have been paying attention: national leaders legitimizing white nationalism and demonizing immigrants, or the obsessive impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden without "a shred of evidence." Milbank brings useful detail and nuance to his portrait of this broken political system. For example, we learn that Matt Gaetz left a draft of his "Motion to Vacate" the Speaker on a changing table in a Capitol restroom and that Marjorie Taylor Greene thought "indictable crimes" was pronounced "indicktable."
Clear revelations about how abuse of congressional power and political dysfunction have never been so egregious.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780316570923
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
