A mostly dispassionate discussion of an issue that must be addressed.
A timely anecdotal narrative about how every incumbent U.S. president has left office, focusing on departures or near departures under duress.
In each chapter, former CIA officer Priess (The President’s Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to America’s Presidents, 2016) discusses a discrete path toward departure: rejected by one’s own political party (Presidents Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Arthur, and Lyndon Johnson); undermined by opponents and/or subordinates (Nixon); sunk due to general unpopularity (Taft); death by natural causes (Harrison, Taylor, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt); assassination (Lincoln, McKinley, Garfield, Kennedy); temporarily unable to serve due to a traumatic occurrence (Wilson, Eisenhower, Reagan); and impeachment (Andrew Johnson, Clinton). Throughout the book, Priess delves into the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, explaining debates among the Founding Fathers about how much stability to offer a chief executive. Nobody desired an executive with powers so weak as to be ineffective, but at the same time, nobody wanted to be ruled by a monarchy similar to the one from which the country had just won independence. The author makes the historical context relevant through his skilled storytelling, and at the end of the book, he concedes that his research focuses on the “how” of the removal processes without addressing the question of “when.” Although Priess rarely mentions Donald Trump by name, he clearly has the sitting president in mind as he explores the idea of an incumbent president being clearly unfit for office. Of course, he writes, it is inevitable that a centuries-old Constitution cannot be expected to anticipate every permutation of unfitness. As a result, he suggests, without offering specifics, that contemporary policymakers consider amending the Constitution to adapt to current circumstances. Harking back to Abraham Lincoln, Priess writes that government of the people, by the people, and for the people must encompass fair but contemporary means of removing presidents if necessary.
A mostly dispassionate discussion of an issue that must be addressed.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5417-8820-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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