Absorbing history spanning five complex decades of geopolitics and economics with clarity and panache. Longtime Moscow and Washington correspondent for the (Manchester) Guardian, Walker (The Money Soldiers, 1980) combines a broad awareness of history with a journalist's magpie eye for the telling anecdote—such as Reagan and Gromyko breaking through the strategic permafrost by acknowledging the demands of mortality in the form of their mutual bladder trouble. With a keen sense of drama, Walker portrays the Cold War as a high-stakes game of brinkmanship, bluff, and counterbluff played by a shifting and adroitly sketched cast. Although the two superpowers occupy center stage, Walker's perspective is global, moving from Berlin and Yalta just after WW II to the economic and political distortions that the 40-year standoff inflicted throughout an increasingly polarized world. As outright war became an ever more unthinkable prospect, America and Russia's contest—the first total ideological war, Walker suggests—was increasingly displaced onto a latter-day version of the ``Great Game'' of 19th-century imperialism played out in proxy conflicts on every continent. Walker addresses Cuba and Vietnam, summit meetings and showdowns, but what he regards as ultimately decisive is the ongoing war of economic attrition brought on by the Cold War's massive expenditures. And although he credits Reagan (no doubt too generously for some tastes) with the foresight both to call the USSR's bluff in the arms race and to match Gorbachev's vision of a nuclear-free world with his own, Walker suggests that American ``victory'' was bought at a huge price: Not only did the US see its economic hegemony usurped by the European and Asian allies its geopolitical strategy had enriched, but its own economic exhaustion finally rivaled that of its bested Soviet counterpart. This outcome fits the central irony of Walker's Cold War: America and Russia ``had more in common with one another than with their fractious and unruly allies.''
Pub Date: June 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-3190-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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