The argument doesn’t cinch the charge, but the book makes for a useful summation of ceaseless and blatant malfeasance.
Rothkopf ranges across American history for confirming examples that hold Donald Trump guilty of treason.
In his new book, On Treason, Carlton F.W. Larson, a California law professor, discusses how the crime of treason is bound up in such specific technicalities that it is almost never prosecuted as such. Rothkopf takes a less confining view here, holding that Trump “has repeatedly, indisputably, and egregiously betrayed his country.” He has done this through many acts of commission, though the author hits hardest on the Mueller Report’s assertions of actions that favored other countries—especially Russia—over the one Trump ostensibly leads. A president who is a traitor is a highly unusual situation. But as Rothkopf observes, there have been many other Americans who, motivated by money or ideology, have aided the nation’s enemies. The most notorious of them is Benedict Arnold, whose very name is a byword for treason and who attempted to trade away military secrets that might have led to the failure of the American revolutionary cause. Aaron Burr appealed to the British for help in trying to realize his ambitions to power, though they were lukewarm to the idea, and, writes the author, “there is no evidence they sought to break up the United States.” John Brown was executed for treason against the state of Virginia, though the charge would not be entertained today. And so forth, on down to the Rosenbergs—who, unfortunately for them, fell afoul of Roy Cohn, later to become Trump’s mentor and “often cited as precisely the kind of lawyer Trump was looking for when he appointed William Barr to be U.S. attorney general, a position Trump saw as primarily existing to protect him from his accusers.” There are many questions that lawyers need to ask Trump that concern his disdain for American institutions and fondness for foreign dictators, but Rothkopf’s conclusions are open-ended.
The argument doesn’t cinch the charge, but the book makes for a useful summation of ceaseless and blatant malfeasance.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-22883-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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