More hard-hitting, abundant documentation of a woefully incapable president’s litany of failures.
A timely account of the current president’s tumultuous relationships with nearly everyone in the national security establishment.
CNN national security analyst and New America vice president Bergen (Co-Director, Center for the Future of War/Arizona State Univ.; United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists, 2016, etc.) focuses his latest insightful exposé on Donald Trump’s national security strategy—or lack thereof—which has largely alienated his slew of Pentagon and National Security Agency staff. The author opens with a turning point six months into Trump’s presidency, July 20, 2017, when the president—spurred on by his chief strategist, Steve Bannon—rejected his top generals’ advice about the long-standing post–World War II order bolstered by the U.S. Trump favored dumping NATO and insisting U.S. allies “stand up and write some checks” for a change. “For Trump,” writes Bergen, “mutual defense alliances such as NATO were largely worthless.” Through meticulously documented interviews and research, the author amply shows how the Trump administration has stubbornly stuck with this free-wheeling playbook of slash and burn: berating NATO allies; implementing a “Muslim ban” against countries that had nothing to do with terrorist attacks against the U.S., such as Syria, and thus deepening the refugee crisis there; threatening to withdraw troops from Afghanistan without consulting or even informing his generals; and standing by internationally excoriated authoritarian leaders such as Putin and Kim Jong-un despite repeated demonstrations of their perfidy. Trump’s choice of generals has become a revolving door, beginning with Mike Flynn, who was obsessed with wacky conspiracy theories and fired after less than one month on the job as national security adviser; H.R. McMaster, who departed after a year as Flynn’s predecessor; James Mattis, who left after two years as secretary of defense; and John Kelly, who eventually resigned as chief of staff. As Bergen notes, “Trump…set records for the level of turnover at the White House and his cabinet.”
More hard-hitting, abundant documentation of a woefully incapable president’s litany of failures.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-52241-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Not an easy read but an essential one.
Title notwithstanding, this latest from the National Book Award–winning author is no guidebook to getting woke.
In fact, the word “woke” appears nowhere within its pages. Rather, it is a combination memoir and extension of Atlantic columnist Kendi’s towering Stamped From the Beginning (2016) that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. Never wavering from the thesis introduced in his previous book, that “racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas,” the author posits a seemingly simple binary: “Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” The author, founding director of American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, chronicles how he grew from a childhood steeped in black liberation Christianity to his doctoral studies, identifying and dispelling the layers of racist thought under which he had operated. “Internalized racism,” he writes, “is the real Black on Black Crime.” Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth, all the way to the intersectional constructs of gender racism and queer racism (the only section of the book that feels rushed). Each chapter examines one facet of racism, the authorial camera alternately zooming in on an episode from Kendi’s life that exemplifies it—e.g., as a teen, he wore light-colored contact lenses, wanting “to be Black but…not…to look Black”—and then panning to the history that informs it (the antebellum hierarchy that valued light skin over dark). The author then reframes those received ideas with inexorable logic: “Either racist policy or Black inferiority explains why White people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than Black people today.” If Kendi is justifiably hard on America, he’s just as hard on himself. When he began college, “anti-Black racist ideas covered my freshman eyes like my orange contacts.” This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory.
Not an easy read but an essential one.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-50928-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A moving essay that should find its way into the hands of all students and teachers to provoke new conversation and...
An enchanting plea by the award-winning Nigerian novelist to channel anger about gender inequality into positive change.
Employing personal experience in her examination of “the specific and particular problem of gender,” National Book Critics Circle winner Adichie (Americanah, 2013, etc.) gently and effectively brings the argument about whether feminism is still relevant to an accessible level for all readers. An edited version of a 2012 TEDxEuston talk she delivered, this brief essay moves from the personal to the general. The author discusses how she was treated as a second-class citizen back home in Nigeria (walking into a hotel and being taken for a sex worker; shut out of even family meetings, in which only the male members participate) and suggests new ways of socialization for both girls and boys (e.g., teaching both to cook). Adichie assumes most of her readers are like her “brilliant, progressive” friend Louis, who insists that women were discriminated against in the past but that “[e]verything is fine now for women.” Yet when actively confronted by an instance of gender bias—the parking attendant thanked Louis for the tip, although Adichie had been the one to give it—Louis had to recognize that men still don’t recognize a woman’s full equality in society. The example from her childhood at school in Nigeria is perhaps the most poignant, demonstrating how insidious and entrenched gender bias is and how damaging it is to the tender psyches of young people: The primary teacher enforced an arbitrary rule (“she assumed it was obvious”) that the class monitor had to be a boy, even though the then-9-year-old author had earned the privilege by winning the highest grade in the class. Adichie makes her arguments quietly but skillfully.
A moving essay that should find its way into the hands of all students and teachers to provoke new conversation and awareness.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-91176-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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