A well-researched and highly readable historical account.
A historical account of a blacksmith who tests the limits of America’s justice system.
In 1798 Philadelphia, Patrick Lyon is a hardworking, honest blacksmith. He’s a Scottish immigrant who fairly recently became a citizen of the United States and leagues away from the monied class that controls the fledgling republic’s government. Summers are a dangerous time in Philadelphia, as yellow fever rages, and those who can afford it leave for the countryside. Lyon can’t, so through most of the summer he keeps his shop open and does work for a number of customers, including the Bank of Pennsylvania. But when disease becomes too much to bear, he leaves for Delaware. While he’s gone, the Bank of Pennsylvania is robbed; Lyon is charged with the robbery without probable cause and held in jail for months. Authors Lankenau and Lankenau prove to have done their research; in an authors’ note, they establish that this book isn’t simply about one man’s abuse at the hands of an early United States justice system—it is “a rare and extraordinary glimpse into early patrician America.” It’s the story of an immigrant who “discovers the truths written in the Declaration of Independence to be anything but self-evident” and a book that weighs in on issues of its day without doing so in a didactic manner. A good portion of the narrative relies on dialogue, and the authors make it clear that it’s pulled from real exchanges gathered via trial transcripts, journals, and other primary sources; a comprehensive list of notes can be found at the end of the book. Sections in italics are direct quotations—exactly how the speakers said or wrote them more than 200 years ago. Because the authors are so transparent about their process, readers will trust in the narrative’s accuracy even when the structure seems clunky; the book relies on relatively short sections and chapters that make for easy reading but aren’t necessarily ideal for cohesive, sustained storytelling.
A well-researched and highly readable historical account.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-942586-82-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little Creek Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.
Tired of the lies about the 2020 election? Buckle up: Trump is just warming up, and his allies may be getting craftier.
“This is not a book about January 6, 2021. It is a book about January 6, 2025,” write legal scholars Lessig and Seligman. We are lucky, Lessig suggests, that John Eastman and his fellow plotters “picked the dumbest possible strategy for pursuing what we feared they were trying to accomplish”: namely, trying to convince Mike Pence that he had the constitutional authority to refuse to certify the results by which Joe Biden won the presidency. One might argue that the second dumbest strategy was to send an army of fascist goons to the Capitol to try to enforce Eastman’s argument. However, Lessig and Seligman argue, there are holes in the Constitution wide enough to drive a burning dumpster through, and they might allow an interested party to falsely claim victory in a closely contested race and win the election. The authors presume that any such gaming-the-system effort will come from MAGA Republicans, though they add that a Democrat could easily use the same tactics. Readers may need a law degree to follow some of the arguments, but others are quite accessible. One argument that Lessig has been mounting for some time, for instance, is that the winner-take-all method employed by most states for electoral votes needs to be replaced with an apportionment system so that the Electoral College count will align with the popular vote. On that score, the authors warn, the prospect of rogue electors—or more, rogue governors who control those electors—is very real, and numerous other threats could enable someone smarter than the last bunch to mount “a cataclysmic attack on our democracy.”
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780300270792
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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