by David Cay Johnston ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 30, 2021
True believers won’t be swayed, but those inclined to despise Trump and Trumpism will find ample reinforcement.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and longtime Trump-watcher delivers enough charges to fuel a few hundred indictments.
Johnston opens with a scenario of desperation: In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, great numbers of low-income, poorly informed Americans longed for a savior who “would relieve their financial crisis.” What they got was a “master con artist” who would “cheat them out of what they had, all the while telling them that he was really their friend and helper.” Step 1: Destroy the notion of objective truth. Step 2: Send up a smokescreen of lies. Step 3: Loot the people’s treasury, self-dealing while leaving scraps for other financial predators. Johnston assembles a case that’s full of news and startling incidents. In one, a 29-year-old Trump assaults outgoing New York Mayor Abe Beame to strong-arm a sweetheart deal; though police officers escorted him from Beame’s office, he got what he demanded. The behavioral pattern with the most staying power is not violence, however, but cheating: overstating assets, engaging in phony accounting, not paying taxes. With the power of the presidency, Trump—who, Johnston reminds us, is the only president past or present at the center of a felony investigation—opened the nation’s coffers to his fellow grifters, engaging in “the kind of borrowing that made Trump infamous—money you borrow but never pay back in full and perhaps not at all.” Those fellow grifters are legion, but at the top of the list are daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as former transportation secretary Elaine Chao, poster children “who illustrate the need for strict ethics training and for equally strict enforcement of laws against misusing public office.” Trump’s sole accomplishment, by Johnston’s account, was the failed coup of Jan. 6, 2021, because it “testifies to his incompetence” while shining a light on would-be dictators waiting in the wings.
True believers won’t be swayed, but those inclined to despise Trump and Trumpism will find ample reinforcement.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982178-03-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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edited by David Cay Johnston
by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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by Shavone Charles ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Leo Baker ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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