A deeply reported look at how the president who promised to “drain the swamp” has been operating from the sewer.
A report on the hush-money scandals that have threatened the presidency of Donald Trump.
Palazzolo and Rothfeld led a Wall Street Journal team that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series of stories on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s shady payments to Stormy Daniels. The reporters tied these efforts directly to Trump and also connected that effort to an earlier deal with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year with whom Trump had relations, and an agreement with the publisher of the National Enquirer to silence her. “The Journal had little interest,” write the authors, “in a story about Trump having had consensual affairs”—his philandering was well-known—“…but hush money was indisputably newsworthy.” The authors clearly demonstrate how the stories the reporters broke had larger ramifications and continue to reverberate, as they connect through Cohen to dealings with Russia investigated as part of the Mueller Report and show that the president’s tendencies to lie and bluff and distance himself from his enablers long predate his entry into politics. This sordid tale extends from the early influence of Roy Cohn through the more recent efforts of Rudy Giuliani as Trump’s “fixer.” Yet the heart of the book is the relationship and subsequent estrangement between Trump and Cohen, who was loyal to a fault and felt his loyalty had been betrayed. The authors detail how Cohen claimed he had never requested a pardon from Trump, though he had, repeatedly; and how Cohen’s numerous gambits to enrich himself hurt his attempts to cut his prison time. Nearly everyone in this book is some sort of double dealer or worse; the narrative doesn’t pit good guys against bad guys but rather bad guys battling worse guys.
A deeply reported look at how the president who promised to “drain the swamp” has been operating from the sewer.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13239-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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