by John Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2007
A dizzying read, but a timely and important work.
All the president’s men of Houston receive a powerful lashing in this soundly researched, only occasionally sarcastic exposé of high-level corruption by investigative journalist Anderson (Art Held Hostage: The Battle Over the Barnes Collection, 2003, etc.).
The author skillfully moves from the 15-block section of downtown Houston that anchors such corporate giants as Reliant Energy, Enron, Shell Oil, Dynegy Corp. and James A. Baker III’s Institute for Public Policy (at Rice University) to the power center of George W. Bush’s Washington. With the changing of the guard in Texas in 1994—when Governor Ann Richards was voted out and the mild-mannered George W. moved in (thanks to the behind-the-scenes machinations of Karl Rove)—the Republicans had a “pig roast.” And with the Republican surge came the right-wing Congressman Tom DeLay, who was seemingly innocuous until he became majority whip in 1995. A dangerous Republican trio was formed by Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, who gained access to DeLay through his chief of staff Ed Buckham. Together, they effectively worked as lobbyists for many dubious and (for them) lucrative enterprises, such as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which would eventually pay Abramoff some $7.2 million in lobbying fees and provide the convenient off-site location for U.S. Family Network (USFN), DeLay’s “grassroots” organization used for political contributions and money laundering. Another pet lobby was the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, which paid Abramoff grandly to lobby against the proposed federal tax on Indian casino profits. Anderson ably chronicles this incredible tale of unbridled greed in government by “Casino Jack” and “DeLay, Inc.” and follows the money trail through the infamous 2000 presidential election recount and the rigging of justice over the war in Iraq. The trail leads to Texas cronies Dick Cheney, Jim Baker and Alberto Gonzales, who all get a thrashing here, though Anderson falls short of indicting the president, who is chastised for his lack of “oversight.”
A dizzying read, but a timely and important work.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7432-8643-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
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by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 1974
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
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