An accessible and informative reassessment of an infamous terrorist incident that offers new details.
An expert on Libya and a witness to the 2012 Benghazi attack reassesses the tragedy and its impact.
Even after a decade, Chorin writes, the aforementioned attack on two American diplomatic outposts remains “confusing” and, in some instances, “genuinely puzzling.” Not only are multiple eyewitness accounts “distorted” and some critical information is simply “missing,” he says, but the account of the terrorist incident also became more muddied by its immediate politicization. Indeed, he asserts that the attack served as a shibboleth for Republicans who accused “Democrats of covering up critical information,” with Democrats retorting that “it was drama manufactured by Republicans.” As he notes, the event continues to resonate: “Benghazi wasn’t the cause of any of America’s political dysfunctions….But it was both a symptom and accelerator of them.” As one of the few American diplomats posted in Libya in the early 2000s—and as the author of Exit the Colonel (2012), a book on Libyan history and politics, Chorin is an authority on the North African nation; his writings have also appeared in the New York Times and Foreign Policy. This book does an admirable job of analyzing the impact of Benghazi on U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics, and it’s effective at providing historical context. The greatest strength of the book, however, lies in its heart-pounding narrative, which describes Chorin’s personal experiences in Benghazi from a nearby hotel on the night of the attack. Though no longer a diplomat, he was working at the time as a coordinator for a multinational company researching port cities; despite leaving the Foreign Service, he admits, “I couldn’t leave Libya behind.”
Over the course of this book, Chorin provides a harrowing personal perspective on the fateful day, with a number of salient details readers won’t find elsewhere. These include an account of speaking with U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who invited the author to the doomed compound mere hours before his own death, and of being left behind after the first round of Benghazi evacuations. Moreover, the author draws on two decades of connections within the country, interviewing multiple non-American subjects, some of whose names have been changed in these pages in order to protect their anonymity; they’ve heretofore refused to give interviews about the events, Chorin says. The book is supported by more than 50 pages of sources and citations, and it balances remarkable depth with an engaging narrative. The complexity that surrounds Benghazi is presented in all its nuance, yet the author’s commanding prose helps to guide readers smoothly through the frenzied series of events. This effort is accompanied by an ample assortment of maps and timelines as well as a list of key figures. Admirably, the author does not engage in partisan statements, refusing to use the tragedy to score political points; Republicans, including Donald Trump, are criticized for exploiting the event to win votes, and the Obama administration is criticized for mishandling a tragedy that, according to the author, was “preventable.” An accessible and informative reassessment of an infamous terrorist incident that offers new details.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9780306829727
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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