From a radiologist attached to both the Stanford Univ. School of Medicine and the Center for International Security and Arms Control—a provocative analysis of the constitutional problems presented by John Hinckley's March 30, 1981, attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Abrams relates the story of Hinckley's drift into homicidal madness, underscoring how easily an apparently ordinary middle- class citizen like Hinckley can develop into a potential assassin. But what the author finds even more alarming is the confused and inadequate response of Reagan Administration officials to the shooting and to the requirements of the 25th Amendment regarding transfer of presidential power (e.g., Secretary of State Alexander Haig's erroneous announcement that he was to act as President)—and how, in their zeal to project the image of a strong President, these officials may have compounded Reagan's medical condition by having him accept visitors prematurely. Indeed, Abrams suggests that Reagan's aides, for purely political reasons, may have endangered the national security by failing to take advantage of the mechanisms offered by the 25th Amendment. For dealing with future similar crises, the author offers policy suggestions that take into account situations ranging from assassination attempts to the President's undergoing anesthesia during an operation. He suggests upgrading the role of the White House physician and seeking a more proper balance between physician-patient confidentiality, on one hand, and the national interest, on the other. An articulate and insightful examination of a problem with unlimited downside potential. (Photographs, drawings—not seen.)
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1992
ISBN: 0-393-03042-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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Not an easy read but an essential one.
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Title notwithstanding, this latest from the National Book Award–winning author is no guidebook to getting woke.
In fact, the word “woke” appears nowhere within its pages. Rather, it is a combination memoir and extension of Atlantic columnist Kendi’s towering Stamped From the Beginning (2016) that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. Never wavering from the thesis introduced in his previous book, that “racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas,” the author posits a seemingly simple binary: “Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” The author, founding director of American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, chronicles how he grew from a childhood steeped in black liberation Christianity to his doctoral studies, identifying and dispelling the layers of racist thought under which he had operated. “Internalized racism,” he writes, “is the real Black on Black Crime.” Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth, all the way to the intersectional constructs of gender racism and queer racism (the only section of the book that feels rushed). Each chapter examines one facet of racism, the authorial camera alternately zooming in on an episode from Kendi’s life that exemplifies it—e.g., as a teen, he wore light-colored contact lenses, wanting “to be Black but…not…to look Black”—and then panning to the history that informs it (the antebellum hierarchy that valued light skin over dark). The author then reframes those received ideas with inexorable logic: “Either racist policy or Black inferiority explains why White people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than Black people today.” If Kendi is justifiably hard on America, he’s just as hard on himself. When he began college, “anti-Black racist ideas covered my freshman eyes like my orange contacts.” This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory.
Not an easy read but an essential one.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-50928-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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