Ask John le Carré or Graham Greene: This isn’t politics; this is what a war looks like when we’re not shooting at each...
Dear Robert Mueller: Follow the money.
This is just the latest in an unrelenting barrage of Trump books, ranging from Omarosa Manigault Newman’s feather-light but gossip-heavy Unhinged to Bob Woodward’s goose bumps–inducing Fear. For those who have been following the ongoing chaos, Washington Post national security reporter Miller’s (co-author: The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War Against al Qaeda, 2004) account of the first two years or so of the current administration may read like a greatest hits of America’s horror show at the hands of a leader unfit to confront the threat of Russian interference. For those who haven’t been paying attention, the book will serve as a damning indictment of not just the administration, but also a Congress that has been unwilling or unable to come to terms with trespasses that figures like former CIA director John Brennan have labeled “nothing short of treasonous.” Though the author doesn’t reveal a ton of explosive material, he does provide important context, particularly in terms of the roles of Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and FBI Director James Comey in the many exhausting episodes of national drama. There are sharp moments—e.g., Miller briefly confronting Kislyak in person or a White House adviser revealing advice to a deeply reluctant Trump about Russian sanctions: “If you veto it, they’ll override you…and then you’re fucked and you look like you’re weak.” Miller isn’t here to prove collusion, an unfair election, or even obstruction of justice, although there’s plenty of hard evidence for all of these charges. Instead, he offers dutiful journalistic work, pointing out all the evidence we’ve seen thus far, connecting the dots, and hypothesizing on exactly how the president of the United States may be compromised by a foreign power.
Ask John le Carré or Graham Greene: This isn’t politics; this is what a war looks like when we’re not shooting at each other. A solid entry in the sure-to-continue stream of books about Trump, Russia, and possible criminality in the highest office.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-280370-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Custom House/Morrow
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
