A messy, self-serving rationalization of one of the biggest debacles in recent American political history.
The inside story of the 2016 presidential campaign, told by a once-powerful political operative pushed to the fringes of her own party.
Brazile (Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, 2004), the former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, is angry, and she wants everybody to know it. Ultimately, this supposedly fiery book, a tell-all chronicle of the election that gave us President Donald Trump, is more a tale of simmering resentment than a full-on bridge-burner. There aren’t that many bombshells to be had, and they’re often couched in rationales that don’t always add up. Brazile inherited her role from Debbie Wasserman Schultz in an organization bleeding cash and failing to recognize its own dysfunction. “As I saw it, these three titanic egos—Barack, Hillary and Debbie—had stripped the party to a shell for their own purposes,” she writes. The author has plenty of targets, and she begins by slinging bile at Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and liaison Brandon Davis. Brazile’s core argument is that the Clinton campaign exerted an unethical influence over campaign funds, pointing to an obscure fundraising agreement, but her case is thin. Less persuasive are her waffling explanations and a nonapology apology for those controversial debate questions. The author also displays disturbing naiveté, particularly regarding WikiLeaks and the much-publicized Russian hacking of the DNC—although the author does make a solid case for fighting back against this unprecedented interference. An undercurrent of paranoia, however valid, also undercuts the narrative as Brazile ponders the murder of Seth Rich and gets advice from an intelligence operative she only identifies as “The Spook.” This is a portrait of a professional political operative marginalized and still suffering from wounds that have yet to heal. In a memoir replete with profanity, Brazile’s post-election mindset might boil down to this: “You know, fuck ’em.”
A messy, self-serving rationalization of one of the biggest debacles in recent American political history.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-47851-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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