Good reading for chaotic times.
A New York Times Berlin correspondent explores the remarkable political tenure of former German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Before the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the U.S. was the global champion of liberal democracy. After that, many observers turned to Germany, headed by then-chancellor Merkel, as the new leader of the free world. Eddy examines Merkel’s life and political career not just in terms of what she achieved, but also in terms of what they can teach both leaders and citizens about how “to lead on any level, or simply to live with integrity.” At the heart of Merkel’s power was her ability to resist expectations to fit any molds. She never let the fact she was a female in a sexist, male-dominated government and society stand in her way. Instead, she focused intensely on the work of governing, brushing off superficial criticisms about her appearance and attire until they became nonissues. Turning weaknesses into strengths, she used every part of her unique background to her advantage. Eddy notes that Merkel’s training as a research scientist taught her to consider “all sides of an option,” even though doing so made her appear indecisive. She also remarks that Merkel’s outsider status as an East German taught her the art of building alliances, which later helped her save the European Union during the financial crisis of 2008. When the ex-chancellor allowed Syrian and African refugees into Germany between 2015 and 2016, she displayed not only a desire to move beyond Germany’s brutal Nazi past, but the moral courage to stand down opposition from critics. As Eddy honors the woman who helped rebuild and reshape a formerly divided country, she suggests that despite the messiness of the democratic process, it still offers the most humane way forward for all in an increasingly unstable world.
Good reading for chaotic times.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781982191030
Page Count: 192
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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