A clear-eyed paean to equality under the law.
Justice comes for an ex-president.
Alter, a longtime political reporter who has interviewed nine presidents, isn’t known for his courthouse journalism, but the bulk of his latest book is about a felony trial in Manhattan. The case is momentous yet surreal, pitting the world’s “most famous man” against the prosecution’s key witness, a former lawyer for the accused who once helped Madame Tussauds secure a likeness of Melania Trump. Alter attended the entirety of Donald Trump’s 2024 trial for hiding hush-money payments to a porn star. His goal: capture the “tactile sense” of this strange historical moment and give the prosecution of a corrupt former president “the constitutional grandeur it deserves.” This is galvanizing stuff, but Alter undermines the book’s seriousness with swipes at Trump’s self-evidently ludicrous hair and penchant for sleeping in court. Alter is far more readable when focused on the prosecution’s strong case. The proceeding pivots on the testimony of erstwhile Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, a somewhat pathetic figure—in his only memorable work for the president in 2017, we learn, he reviewed the first lady’s contract for a wax statue—who nevertheless secures a place in history, testifying about being Trump’s hush-money deliveryman. Alter uses other parts of the book to look inward, admitting that he’s unashamed yet “not proud of” his coverage of the sexual dalliances of Bill Clinton and other officeholders. He confesses that Trump’s political success has shaken his faith “in the common sense and good judgment of roughly half of the American people.” The book’s opening pages, which recall his mother’s political convictions and Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 visit to Alter’s Chicago home, are particularly strong, contextualizing his belief in the importance of holding even the most powerful to account.
A clear-eyed paean to equality under the law.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781637746660
Page Count: 256
Publisher: BenBella
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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