A thorough, if overly optimistic, case for Biden’s agenda.
A Democratic strategist surveys Joe Biden’s first 100 days as president in this political book.
As a child actor whose family was close to Charlton Heston, Hyman is innately weary of liberal “echo chambers” that avoid sincere debates with conservatives. Now a lawyer, strategist, and television pundit, she continues her quest to provide conservatives with a “cordial…well-informed” case from the Democratic perspective as a frequent commentator on Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network. In this book, Hyman’s bipartisan emphasis on placing “people before politics” is on full display, as she offers readers a reframing of American narratives that avoids placing “blame” on her political opponents for national problems and instead focuses on “what is being done to make things better.” Openly acknowledging her role as a “cheerleader” for Biden, the author devotes the bulk of this book to covering every major policy emphasis in the new administration and how these plans would benefit all Americans, including Republican voters. From infrastructure and climate change to health care and gun control, the volume provides a detailed—and laudatory—examination of how Biden’s “promises” align with the “accomplishments” of the first 100 days of his presidency. The book’s final section, which accounts for nearly half of the work’s entire length, supplies a timeline and description of every executive order signed by the president. Those looking for an insider’s account of Biden’s first months in office will be disappointed, as the volume merely delivers summaries of the president’s public statements and policy actions, all spun through the rose-colored lens of a public relations expert. Alternately, those seeking a concise reference of Biden’s major accomplishments have an easy-to-read, accessible, and useful guide. Readers to the political left of Biden’s centrist coalition may find the book’s defense of conservatives an antiquated relic of politics from a bygone era when, in the author’s words, “disagreement, even on important issues, does not make us into enemies.” The Jan. 6 insurrection is thus glossed over in a single passing sentence, as is the resurfacing of White supremacy in mainstream political spheres.
A thorough, if overly optimistic, case for Biden’s agenda.Pub Date: June 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63-755089-2
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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