Remnick’s fluent writing makes this expansive, significant book move along swiftly. Readers will look forward to the sequel,...
From New Yorker editor Remnick (Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker, 2006, etc.), a world-ranging, eye-opening, comprehensive life to date of the 44th President of the United States
World-ranging because, writes the author, “Barack Obama’s family, broadly defined, is vast. It’s multi-confessional, multiracial, multi-lingual, and multi-continental.” One of his half brothers, born in Africa, lives in China; a cousin is a rabbi; other cousins are blond children of the prairie. Then there is his father, a promising economist with a drinking problem, and his mother, an anthropologist who left the young man with her parents in order to pursue her career. Obama, as Remnick’s allusive title suggests, has served as a bridge among cultures and races, though his steadfast wish to be seen as a person of accomplishments who happens to be black does not neatly fit the pigeonholing that so many of his critics wish to entertain—notwithstanding Obama’s evident delight at resisting categories. He makes another bridge, too, as Remnick cogently writes—a bridge to the past and to the bridges Dr. King crossed at Selma, Montgomery and Washington; a bridge, as a memoirist, to the rich history of African-American narrative. The author also delves into Obama’s travels in Pakistan with a Muslim friend and his relationship with the firebrand preacher Jeremiah Wright, all of which fed into “the story of race in the [2008] campaign.” Yet for all the potential political derailments his past and friendships might have caused, the author depicts Obama as a survivor, an adept practical politician and, most importantly, a leader who demands to be taken seriously.
Remnick’s fluent writing makes this expansive, significant book move along swiftly. Readers will look forward to the sequel, eight years from now.Pub Date: April 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4360-6
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.
The chief White House and Washington correspondent for ABC provides a ringside seat to a disaster-ridden Oval Office.
It is Karl to whom we owe the current popularity of a learned Latin term. Questioning chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, he followed up a perhaps inadvertently honest response on the matter of Ukrainian intervention in the electoral campaign by saying, “What you just described is a quid pro quo.” Mulvaney’s reply: “Get over it.” Karl, who has been covering Trump for decades and knows which buttons to push and which to avoid, is not inclined to get over it: He rightly points out that a reporter today “faces a president who seems to have no appreciation or understanding of the First Amendment and the role of a free press in American democracy.” Yet even against a bellicose, untruthful leader, he adds, the press “is not the opposition party.” The author, who keeps his eye on the subject and not in the mirror, writes of Trump’s ability to stage situations, as when he once called Trump out, at an event, for misrepresenting poll results and Trump waited until the camera was off before exploding, “Fucking nasty guy!”—then finished up the interview as if nothing had happened. Trump and his inner circle are also, by Karl’s account, masters of timing, matching negative news such as the revelation that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election with distractions away from Trump—in this case, by pushing hard on the WikiLeaks emails from the Democratic campaign, news of which arrived at the same time. That isn’t to say that they manage people or the nation well; one of the more damning stories in a book full of them concerns former Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, cut off at the knees even while trying to do Trump’s bidding.
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4562-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world.
The author’s father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren’s journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed’s first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: “Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist.
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87493-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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