A relevant, readable effort to link past American colonialism to the present impulse to install homegrown leaders for life.
Character study of the Marine hero who became a radical critic of the system he’d fought to uphold.
Smedley Butler (1881-1940), whose father was a member of Congress, came from a prosperous, influential family. He was determined to excel, and nowhere else did he do so more than as an officer in the Marines, patrolling places such as the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico—islands that formed the basis of an American empire. In his nearly 35 years in uniform, Butler later said, “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers….In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.” Foreign correspondent Katz bookends Butler’s service with a “Business Plot” that, filtered through the American Legion in the 1930s, was intended to mirror the rise of Mussolini in Italy. Butler was asked to head a column of World War I veterans in a march on Washington as Mussolini had marched on Rome, installing the president as a powerless figurehead fronting a fascist government. Butler replied to his interlocutor, “my interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy,” promising that he would raise an army to fight these homegrown fascists. He then took evidence of the plot to Congress, which did precisely nothing. Katz, naturally, links this plot to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Though Butler won two Medals of Honor and is exalted among Marines, Katz makes clear that it’s his heroism and not his politics that are remembered—and then dimly—even as he raised questions about American society and foreign policy that go unanswered today. The author is also not reticent about pointing out that Butler’s dedication to American democracy did not hinder him from crushing democratic movements in Cuba and Haiti, where he helped install regimes that were friendly to the autocracy he despised.
A relevant, readable effort to link past American colonialism to the present impulse to install homegrown leaders for life.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-13558-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
