An exhaustive study that leaves open the question of whether the Biden administration can maintain a steadier hand.
Breaking down the messy nature of Donald Trump’s hard-line China policy and how China took advantage of the relationship.
The last four years of the American government’s stance regarding China was largely guided by the realization that the prior 40-year experiment of engagement and accommodation was not working. China simply did not want political liberalization, and growing evidence revealed that the Chinese Communist Party was infiltrating many facets of American society, from universities to Silicon Valley to Wall Street. As Washington Post foreign policy columnist Rogin shows in meticulous, depressing detail, even though candidate Trump’s aggressive approach effectively called out the authoritarian regime, the administration’s “dysfunction and the president’s behavior” led to erratic results. From the beginning, Trump loyalists like Jared Kushner—guided by Steve Mnuchin and other “pro-business players”—and Steve Bannon fashioned themselves as China experts. Regarding Bannon, the author writes, “it takes real nerve to lead a populist, anti-China movement when you started as a Goldman Sachs executive—and when you have already made your money in China before turning against the system that made that possible. After he left Goldman, Bannon worked for…a Hong Kong startup…[that] used cheap labor in China to mine virtual goods inside computer games to sell for real-world money.” On the other hand, Matthew Pottinger, National Security Council senior director for Asia, managed to craft an intelligible policy and was one of the few who stuck it out for all four years of Trump’s presidency. Rogin delineates how, by 2018, hawks like Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence overruled the pro-business faction, leading to the implementation of tariffs and an all-out trade war. The spread of Covid-19, which Trump repeatedly dubbed the “China virus,” as well as the violent suppression in Hong Kong ensured that U.S.–China relations reached a low point by the 2020 election. It doesn’t make for heartening reading, but Rogin covers it comprehensively.
An exhaustive study that leaves open the question of whether the Biden administration can maintain a steadier hand.Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-39324-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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