A welcome restoration of a largely forgotten politician who navigated issues that continue to reverberate.
Vigorous biography of the Idaho senator who, “like an American Cicero, offered the United States a brief glimpse of what it would be like to turn away from its imperialistic ambitions.”
Democratic politician Frank Church (1924-1984), who was elected to the U.S. Senate before Idaho became a solidly Republican state, displayed a natural ability to maneuver through the knotty landscape of politics. As two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning political journalist Risen writes, he didn’t mind making enemies in the absence of allies: “Frank Church was a loner in the Senate…and didn’t go out of his way to cultivate close ties.” A strong supporter of John F. Kennedy, he went up against Lyndon Johnson on a number of key issues. Though he endorsed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (and later regretted it), he proved a stalwart opponent of the Vietnam War. He came to equate that war with a covert program of American imperialism, and after helping conduct the Watergate inquiries, he formed a Senate committee that exposed the nefarious activities of the intelligence community, including the CIA’s alliance with the Mafia in an effort to assassinate Fidel Castro and its connection to many other killings—perhaps even JFK’s. Woven into Risen’s story are the still-unsolved murders of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and a made-man foot soldier, both of whom supplied the Church Committee with information. Church also examined presidents’ use of emergency powers to advance their agendas; in this as well as other discoveries of his committee, he arrived at “a difficult question: was the disgraced Richard Nixon really that different from his predecessors in the White House?” The answer is debatable, but Risen credits Church with preventing the rise of the deep state, which “remains a myth, a right-wing conspiracy theory,” precisely “because Frank Church brought the intelligence community fully into the American system of government.”
A welcome restoration of a largely forgotten politician who navigated issues that continue to reverberate.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9780316565134
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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