Chait offers a well-organized, clearly written case that will be valuable to future historians in their assessments. The...
A cogent argument that President Barack Obama has mostly succeeded in implementing his agenda.
As reflected in the book's title, New York political columnist Chait (The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics, 2007), a former senior editor at the New Republic, claims that Obama established audacious goals and never lost sight of how to implement them despite the opposition of the Republican majority within the U.S. Congress and ongoing racism throughout American society. Without tipping his hand about his long game, Chait maintains, Obama decided to absorb short-term setbacks, believing he would win a second term to accomplish what could not be implemented during the first. The author does not pretend to offer a scorecard on every vital initiative presented during Obama's two terms; rather, Chait focuses on the president’s approaches to economic policy, which was designed to alleviate the recession inherited from the Republicans; health care reform and the Affordable Care Act; combating environmental degradation; and navigating the wars being waged around the globe. Within each chapter, the author questions the perceptions of presidential success versus failure, not only among Obama's virulent detractors, but also among his leftist supporters. Chait attempts to unravel what he views as the mystery of how so many commentators put forth what became the conventional wisdom that Obama failed to achieve meaningful change during his presidency—despite the evidence to the contrary. The author predicts that after Obama leaves the presidency, this wrongheaded perception will dissipate. He also moves his argument beyond policy proposals to suggest that Obama's admirable character and steely mental makeup contributed significantly to policy successes.
Chait offers a well-organized, clearly written case that will be valuable to future historians in their assessments. The question is whether readers with different opinions about Obama's performance will alter those opinions.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-242697-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Custom House/Morrow
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A self-involved, amateurish tale of a trip into the world of capital punishment. Freelance journalist Goldhammer made a cross-country journey in 1990 to explore the world of state-sanctioned killing. ``If I wanted to read an in-depth report on capital punishment, I would have to write it myself,'' he declares. However, his findings don't go much beyond extant journalism, and his book is far overshadowed by Helen Prejean's Dead Men Walking (1993). Goldhammer writes in a modified diary form, with long quotes from his subjects amplified by awkward faux drama: ``In my mind, trepidation hung in the cool fall air....'' He opposes the death penalty, citing the usual, solid reasons: It's no deterrent; it's mainly applied to the poor and black; the endless appeals that follow a sentence of death are more costly than life imprisonment. His interviews contain nuggets of interest: Philosopher Hugo Bedau, author of The Death Penalty in America, declares support for the death penalty ``a mile wide and an inch deep''; much publicized Virginia inmate Joe Giarratano's legal expertise leads a guard at Giarratano's prison to say, ``Everybody here respects him.'' Goldhammer goes to a Florida prison for the execution of Ray Clark, and interviews death penalty abolitionists and supporters; he declares resonantly that the white handkerchief that indicates the execution is complete is ``a sign of surrender,'' of society giving up. In Alabama, the warden in charge of death row refuses to voice his personal views on the death penalty; he says offering education and certain privileges makes his inmates ``the best group of guys I've ever had.'' In closing, the author gives an account of a case he followed, involving a severely retarded young man who brutally killed an eight-year-old boy and was sentenced to death. Falls short both as narrative and as argument. (10 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1994
ISBN: 1-879418-15-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
In a perceptive look at the nation's most distinctive region, Grantham (History/Vanderbilt Univ.) examines the relationship between the South and the rest of the United States during the 20th century. He delineates this relationship in terms of several major themes, exploring the modern history of sectional conflict, the many areas of compromise among the regions, cultural convergence between the South and other areas of the country (with the consequent blurring of southern culture's special features), and the persistence, nonetheless, of southern distinctiveness in the nation's consciousness. Conflict was reflected both in the mutually unflattering perceptions and attitudes of Southerners and Northerners and in substantive differences between the regions on party alignment, civil rights, Prohibition, and federal regulation of utilities, tariffs, and banks. Although it often disagreed with the Northeast, Midwest, and West on these and other issues, the South in Grantham's view pervasively influenced American politics and society as a whole in many ways. Prior to WW II and the civil rights movement, the Democratic party was controlled by its southern wing, and southern Democrats, from Richard B. Russell to Huey Long, were a powerful force in Congress, one with which successive presidents had to reckon. In more recent years conservative southern factions have demonstrated similar influence in the Republican party. With what Grantham calls the ``Second Reconstruction'' of the 1960s and with the emergence of the Sunbelt South, the region has lost its traditional hallmark of backwardness, developing an increasingly urbanized economy and becoming in many ways more prosperous and progressive than the decaying, racially polarized North. Nonetheless, Grantham argues, the South retains some of its special cultural features, including a fervent religiosity, a ``subculture of violence,'' and a profusion of literary talent, from Barry Hannah to Bobbie Ann Mason. A rich, sympathetic, warts-and-all portrait of the South.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-016773-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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