A furious, rueful confession of crimes committed by and on behalf of the sitting president.
Consider everything bad you’ve heard about Donald Trump. Quadruple it, and you have a sense of where this winding book begins.
Not since John Dean’s Blind Ambition have we seen a political mea culpa as thoroughgoing as this one. Like a Mafia chief, Cohen asserts, Trump “wouldn’t mind if I were dead,” and plenty of Trump cultists would be glad to do the hit—or, in the case of Matt Gaetz, he alleges, at least commit blackmail. Cohen’s transgression? To cooperate with the Mueller investigation, which “was not a witch-hunt,” since Trump gladly courted “Russian connivance” in the 2016 election. Cohen enabled this and many other crimes and misdemeanors. At their very first encounter, he recalls, Trump lied to him “directly, demonstrably and without doubt.” He swallowed it because he wanted a taste of the “intoxicating cocktail of power, strength, celebrity, and a complete disregard for the rules and realities that govern our lives.” By Cohen’s account, it was his idea that Trump run for president in both 2012 and 2016, though Trump shied from the former race because he feared Barack Obama, whom he hated with a passion. Trump’s “unhinged Archie Bunker racism” defines him, writes Cohen, as does his contempt for everyone who is not within his inner circle. Even they aren’t safe: “The kid has the worst fucking judgment of anyone I have ever met,” Trump said of Don Jr. He scorns his fundamentalist supporters (“Can you believe people believe that bullshit?”), bilks friends, reneges on promises and debts, and cheats in every possible way. Though some people seem not to mind being ill-used, it’s telling, notes Cohen, that Trump has not a single friend. One thing is sure: If Trump is guilty of even a portion of the charges leveled here, then he has no business being president—though, Cohen warns, Trump will not leave office willingly if he loses in 2020, having found the perfect con game.
A furious, rueful confession of crimes committed by and on behalf of the sitting president.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5107-6469-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
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: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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