A fair and balanced portrait of one of America’s most controversial organizations.
A gun-owning investigative journalist’s history of the National Rifle Association.
Smyth admits he’s a “Fudd,” a derisive NRA term for a gun owner who supports gun regulations. As befits that nuanced stance, the author offers a measured, scrupulously researched political history that shows how the NRA has evolved from an organization promoting rifle marksmanship to an unrelenting foe of all limits on guns. Smyth blends a great-man approach to history with an instinct for following money trails, telling the story of the NRA largely through its leaders and how their financial or other decisions shaped the group and the nation. First came founders George Wood Wingate and William Conant Church, former Union officers who, dismayed by “the appalling lack of marksmanship on both sides in the Civil War,” started the group during Reconstruction. The 20th century brought presidents like Harlon B. Carter, a convicted murderer whose conviction was overturned on appeal; and Marion Hammer, the first female president, who, after the 1992 Rodney King riots, wrote an article called “You loot—we shoot” for NRA publication American Rifleman. The current leader, Wayne LaPierre, has recruited celebrities like Charlton Heston and turned the group into a deep-pocketed political titan that gave $54.4 million to candidates in the 2016 elections. After the Columbine massacre in 1999, the NRA developed “a playbook” for responding to demands for gun controls, which included tactics such as: “Deflect by saying this is not a time to discuss politics but a time to mourn.” Many such unsavory details will be maddening to gun rights absolutists, but Smyth avoids quoting anonymous sources, drawing on well-documented material and staying neutral (and above accusations of bias) on controversies. The result is an authoritative, no-frills story, long on solid information but short on the color and passion that might have made it sing.
A fair and balanced portrait of one of America’s most controversial organizations. (first printing of 200,000) (Adult, nonfiction, history, political history, organizations, National Rifle Association)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21028-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2020
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
A harrowing memoir of grief and love.
An indelible portrait of a mother’s courage.
Award-winning novelist McCann and Foley, mother of murdered journalist James Wright Foley (1973-2014), offer a powerful recounting of the unspeakable tragedy and its aftermath. In August 2014, after being held hostage for two years, Jim was beheaded by Islamic Group terrorists. He had been taken hostage once before, in Libya, but that time was released after 44 days. Undaunted, he went to Syria “determined to bear witness to the horrific bombings and gassings of innocent civilians by the Assad regime.” After he was taken hostage, the Foley family, to their deepening dismay, discovered that the U.S. refused unequivocally to negotiate for hostages’ release, and the Foleys were threatened with prosecution if they tried to raise ransom money on their own. Meanwhile, though, through “an incredibly circuitous route,” several European governments managed to free their own hostages. “They insinuated themselves carefully into the communications system,” the authors write, “got under the umbrella of the emails, and forged their own secret methods that included a network of agents and ambassadors and, yes, even spies.” Foley vents her anger toward the many government officials who claimed they were powerless to help. “The plain fact of the matter is that we don’t care as much for our aid workers or our volunteer ambulance drivers or our journalists as we do for our military,” the authors assert. Foley and her family founded the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation to advocate for the freedom of those taken hostage or detained abroad, and she takes hope from recent legislation, most recently by Biden’s executive order, in support of hostages. Hoping for “answers to help her in the wider work against hostage-taking,” Foley met with one of the terrorists involved in her son’s murder—unsettling encounters that bracket the striking narrative.
A harrowing memoir of grief and love.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9798985882452
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Etruscan Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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