A detailed, deeply reported portrait of a president willfully obstructing justice—with plenty of help.
A damning portrait of the “dangerous figure” occupying the White House.
But her emails! As New York Times reporter Schmidt writes, in its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for official correspondence, the FBI found more than 100 instances of sensitive data but no reason to believe that the breaches were intentional. It’s a far more benign case than any that the author offers with Donald Trump in the lead role. FBI director James Comey, who brought up the Clinton emails right before the 2016 election, suspected ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian help, the leitmotif of Schmidt’s book, but his cautious probes were of little help to those bound up in the “epic struggle to restrain an unbound president.” Granted, Comey busted Michael Flynn early on: “He lied to the FBI, and lies suggest cover-ups. Now, the relationship between Trump, his associates, and the Russians appeared even more suspicious.” Trump asked Comey to let Flynn slide, a wish he wouldn’t get for three years, when William Barr did just that, proving that “the president had bent Washington to his will.” Schmidt’s account embraces the star-crossed Mueller Report, its lead author hobbled by orders from above that he not investigate Trump’s financial ties to Russia, even as Trump constantly threatened to fire him. Central to the story is Trump’s former counsel, Don McGahn, “one of the main reasons Mueller knew so much.” McGahn cooperated with investigators (and, reluctantly and briefly, with Schmidt) even though he was fearful that Trump would fire him, too, before he could finish his project of packing the courts with conservative judges. In this complicated, twisting narrative, the author notes that while the Mueller Report is seemingly moot, it provides prosecutors the wherewithal to charge Trump with crimes after he leaves office—one reason for Trump not to want to do so.
A detailed, deeply reported portrait of a president willfully obstructing justice—with plenty of help.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984854-66-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
IN THE NEWS
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
