Trump Jr. importunes liberals to buy his book "and throw it away." Do him one better: Don’t buy it at all.
The president’s son writes indignantly of “sleepy liberal losers, socialist crybabies, and hypocritical politicians and media.”
The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree. Trump Jr. shares with his father highly specific complaints about the polity as it is, projecting madly as he goes along: Activists use Twitter in place of “our most important media institutions.” The left is a fantastically well-funded machine. “My father says a place is infested with rats, the mob cries racism.” The Mueller Report, written by “an old, over-the-hill puppet,” exonerates father and son. (It does no such thing.) More broadly on the spectrum of paranoia, Trump Jr. is sure that “as the son of a rich white guy living in 2019, I’m essentially not allowed to have an opinion anymore, let alone express that opinion in public,” a curious thing to say in a book of scattershot opinions expressed in public, presumably for a nice chunk of change. He protests that he’s a funny guy, but there’s not much humor in the book—unless you laugh at lines like, “Al Franken was a creepy pervert” (paging Stormy Daniels), and “I may even have pulled some pie charts out of my shorts,” or unless you agree that border crossers are animals and think it’s a fine jape to separate children from their families and lock them up in detention centers. Overall, Trump Jr. is not funny but rather bitterly angry, spitting invective at the likes of Pelosi and Comey, excoriating “Crooked Hillary” and insisting that, next to her, “Biden is the most corrupt establishment politician ever to take a lobbyist’s checks,” and reviling the media as “fake news” (unless it delivers news he agrees with, in which case it’s all right). Like his father, think of a petulant toddler who has a fondness for straw men and an inability to add –ic to “Democrat” and who thinks of himself as “snarky and handsome,” and you need read no more.
Trump Jr. importunes liberals to buy his book "and throw it away." Do him one better: Don’t buy it at all.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5460-8603-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Center Street/Hachette
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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