Next book

CORPORATE BULLSH*T

EXPOSING THE LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS THAT PROTECT PROFIT, POWER, AND WEALTH IN AMERICA

A welcome user’s guide to maneuvering the thicket of lies that constitutes so much discourse today.

Able dissection of the lies corporations and their reputation handlers tell to “defend the indefensible.”

We hear it all the time: Raise the minimum wage, and jobs will disappear. The free market regulates itself more effectively than the government can. Raise taxes on wealthy people and—yes, jobs will disappear. Hanauer, Walsh, and Cohen calls these specimens of “concern-trolling” part of a spurious “protection racket for the superrich,” always with a hidden threat that if you don’t give them what they want, the plutocrats will pick up their toys and go home. By the authors’ account, the arguments the superrich and their vassals make hinge on six major tenets, ranging from the overarching thought that any attempt at reform will only make matters worse to the familiar canard that efforts at economic justice are socialism in action. As the narrative proceeds, they pepper it with supporting quotations from oligarch-adjacent organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which once held—in the face of any number of workplace violations—that “employers do not deliberately allow work conditions to exist which cause injury or illness.” Just so, a former Reagan-era secretary of the interior insisted that climate change in the form of a disappearing ozone layer affected only people who stood out in the sun, as if a sizable portion of the workforce didn’t labor outdoors. As the authors note, it has always been this way. When Grover Cleveland first called for an income tax on “the top 1 percent at the time…howls of complaint ensued.” Today those factories of disinformation persist in the form of think tanks, ad agencies, PACs, and—well, politicians of a certain party, all of whom the authors urge be combatted by asking hard questions: “Who’s telling the story, and how do they stand to benefit from the status quo?”

A welcome user’s guide to maneuvering the thicket of lies that constitutes so much discourse today.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023

ISBN: 9781620977514

Page Count: 176

Publisher: The New Press

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023

Next book

WAR

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Documenting perilous times.

In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024

ISBN: 9781668052273

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

Next book

THE MESSAGE

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Bearing witness to oppression.

Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024

ISBN: 9780593230381

Page Count: 176

Publisher: One World/Random House

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

Close Quickview