Just the thing for Biden haters and insurrectionists.
A preening, defiant memoir by a Trump stalwart.
While the flood of their memoirs shows no sign of letting up, even the most full-throated of Trump’s supporters allow that storming the Capitol was maybe not such a good idea. Not Pompeo, who mentions it only once, as “that January 6, the one the Left wants to exploit for political advantage.” The author doesn’t discuss the coup attempt or other inconvenient truths of Trump’s last days, but there’s plenty about Pompeo being exactly the right man for the right job—jobs, rather—that Trump offered him. Pompeo, top of his West Point class and fearless Kansas congressman, knew that his duty was to save the CIA, which “desperately needed good leadership” after John Brennan, “a total disaster.” By Pompeo’s account, it was he, as secretary of state, who made Iran blink, North Korea flinch, and Putin behave. (That Russia/Trump business? A hoax. The Hunter Biden laptop thing, however, is very real and very important.) According to the author’s account, he did all of this almost single-handedly, since supposed fellow traveler John Bolton, among others, “cared far more about taking credit and nurturing his ego than he did for executing the president’s directives….If everyone had behaved as selfishly as Bolton had, very little would ever have gotten accomplished.” Pompeo proves that one can be a dedicated Trumper and also endlessly self-serving. Granted, he does give a shoutout or two to others in the administration, mostly nameless, as when he writes, “In the end, our team left America more secure and more respected—even if not always more loved—in the world,” not like the present administration, which is to blame for all that’s wrong today—except maybe Covid-19, which came out of a Chinese lab. Pompeo also makes room to advocate for waterboarding.
Just the thing for Biden haters and insurrectionists.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780063247444
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Broadside Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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
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
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