A journalist unearths information revealing that the president is even more dangerous than previously thought.
A new standard in presidential recklessness.
Other reporters beat this respected ABC newsman to press, but the scoops in his 2024 campaign book were worth the wait. Though last fall’s election results prevented a special counsel investigating Donald Trump from showing his findings in court, Karl’s reporting fills in some blanks. He presents previously unpublished handwritten notes by Mike Pence that describe Trump’s rash behavior on January 6, 2021; details on how Trump “spent most of the afternoon—scrolling through Twitter—as his supporters attacked the Capitol”; and statements that a top Trump staffer, “shocked” by his handling of secret documents, made to prosecutors. Facing this opponent, Democrats found time to accuse one another of subterfuge. Remember Joe Biden’s July 2024 letter telling Democrats to quit trying to oust him as the nominee? “I don’t think he wrote it,” Nancy Pelosi tells Karl. And count Hunter Biden among those who “believed Barack Obama was somehow behind” George Clooney’s op-ed asking Biden to bow out. Striving for “a definitive account,” Karl revisits risible episodes (Whither “childless cat ladies”?) and all-caps social media rage that some readers might rather forget. But there’s a silver lining: It all could have been much worse. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, tells Karl that if he hadn’t been imprisoned for contempt of Congress when a would-be assassin shot at Trump, he would’ve tried to incite unrest by “throwing fucking gasoline on” the smoldering tension. And yet, Karl reminds us, Trump has said he wouldn’t mind the murder of reporters, and in his second term he’s a potentially “more consequential, more radical” president, attacking his enemies, courts, anti-corruption laws, and aid programs. Maybe he won’t “topple American democracy, but he has shown how it can be done.” Karl’s warning stands atop powerful evidence.
A journalist unearths information revealing that the president is even more dangerous than previously thought.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798217047000
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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