An impressive research effort showing how, when it comes to current political affairs, the past is almost always prologue.
A scholarly book about the dirty operations of the American government that feels like it has been ripped from the headlines.
In his capacity as a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, Prados (Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun, 2012, etc.) regularly sees top-secret documents as they quietly enter the public domain. The book is part of the publisher’s Discovering America series, which is based on the premise that much of the American experience remains to be told by historians and cultural critics with fresh takes on events and individuals seemingly well-known but often masked. When the author viewed the documents known collectively as "the Family Jewels," which set out covert CIA operations from the 1950s to the early 1970s, he realized he could teach about the contemporary American surveillance state by referencing and examining recent history. After all, the Family Jewels, never meant to be shared with the general citizenry, demonstrates how the CIA has spied on Americans despite a ban against domestic operations, has tortured alleged enemies captured during wartime and peacetime, and has assassinated overseas leaders viewed as "enemies" of the U.S. The book seems ripped from the headlines due to the recent massive news coverage of the NSA’s monitoring of telephone and digital conversations, perhaps without legal authority. Prados takes readers inside not only the CIA in an attempt to plumb the thinking behind the questionable secretive operations, but also the White House, the halls of Congress and newsrooms. As a result, he casts light on shadowy cultures that often undermine democracy.
An impressive research effort showing how, when it comes to current political affairs, the past is almost always prologue.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-292-73762-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
A candid but unenlightening memoir of the failed effort to defend segregation before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Wilson (Law/Univ. of Kansas), in 1954 assistant attorney general for the state of Kansas, writes as the only surviving litigator of the landmark case that ended segregation in the nation's public schools. Back then he was a fledgling ``country lawyer'' infected by what he calls ``the Kansas ambivalence'' about race relations, who was suddenly charged with representing his state before the Supreme Court—and before national opinion. Wilson makes no bones about his current belief that segregation was morally reprehensible and un-American. However, his account of his views 40 years ago is less clear: Sometimes he admits he just doesn't remember; at others, he swears that if he had been a state legislator he would have voted to end the practice. Nevertheless, once charged with writing the brief for Brown, Wilson became convinced that ``history and tradition and judicial precedent'' were on his side. After all, he rationalized, unlike the schools of Virginia or South Carolina (whose cases also fell under the province of Brown), Kansas's separate schools were ``substantially equal'' in quality. Most important, his job was to vigorously invoke legal precedent (especially Plessy v. Ferguson) and the rule of law. Wilson's persistent belief that he was just focusing on the law, and doing his job, comes across today as pathetic and even comical. When he takes Plessy and his new dark suit to the Supreme Court, the Justices (especially Frankfurter) mock him then ignore him in their unanimous opinion. But Wilson is characteristically clueless: ``I was satisfied that I had looked and talked and behaved like a lawyer.'' Repetitive, simplistic, and inadvertently humorous, this book will not win sympathy for its legalistic defense of segregation.
Pub Date: March 30, 1995
ISBN: 0-7006-0709-9
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Univ. Press of Kansas
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
An examination of the friction that often arises between parents and the caregivers they entrust with their children. Drawing on more than 150 interviews conducted in Los Angeles and New York, Wrigley (Sociology/City Univ. of New York; Class Politics and Public Schools, not reviewed) focuses on the inevitable social gulf that exists between upper-middle-class parents and the child-care workers they hire. Only a small minority of caregivers (often college students) have middle-class backgrounds; most are from poor Third World countries such as El Salvador, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands. Because of the educational, social, and economic chasm between employer and employee, the author argues, child care is often embedded in ``a relationship of inequality'' that frequently has a negative impact on the concern the caregivers—as social subordinates—offer the children in their charge. There are many reasons why employers hire people so different from themselves, states Wrigley. Immigrants are often willing to work for relatively low wages and are prepared to take on housework duties in addition to childrearing tasks. They can't be counted on, however, to be ``stimulating and educational'' substitute parents; many do not even speak English. The author points out that parents who opt for ``class peers'' over immigrants have merely taken on a different set of problems: These caregivers do not perceive their role as subordinate, and their employers often don't know how to integrate them into the household; struggles to establish boundaries are inevitable. Wrigley concludes that high-quality, accessible day care is a viable option that can better meet the needs of most parents and their children. Serviceable, but this rather drab account would have been livelier if Wrigley had included some anecdotes and quoted more from first-person narratives.
Pub Date: April 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-05370-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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