Red meat for politics watchers, unsparing in its depiction of a time of torment.
Newsworthy look at the last months of the Trump White House and the first of the Biden administration.
Early in the pages of this hard-hitting account by New York Times reporters Martin and Burns, the Democratic chair of the House Armed Services Committee voices doubt that Donald Trump was interested in or even capable of mounting a coup, adding, “my perception is, he is a fucking moron.” The events of Jan. 6, 2021, told a different story. Trump had never even bothered to pretend that he governed for all Americans, instead cultivating a reactionary, rural, White base and an ethos within the White House that followed “the logic of a protection racket, more or less.” That Joe Biden won while Republicans gained seats in Congress speaks to the ineptitude of Trump and company. Still, as the authors observe, Biden has had difficulty shaping a coherent message, some of it perhaps caused by his initial uncertainty about whether his running mate was right for the job. “During the primary,” write the authors, “Biden privately and repeatedly shared versions of a common observation about [Kamala] Harris: She doesn’t seem to know who she wants to be.” Martin and Burns deliver plenty of news, such as Lindsey Graham’s demand that Trump call off the Capitol rioters or face the invocation of the 25th Amendment. The authors also offer nuanced portraits of some of the key players in this saga: Mitch McConnell, ever exercising a political calculus by which he could deem Trump a “despicable human being” yet twice vote against impeaching him; Kevin McCarthy, so hungry for power that he allowed that Trump bore responsibility for the coup attempt yet rushed to declare fealty to the boss; Lisa Murkowski, who expressed wonder that so many Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen and questions that calculus of McConnell’s, saying of the impeachment vote, “I wish that it had been different.”
Red meat for politics watchers, unsparing in its depiction of a time of torment.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982172-48-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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