An important addition to the ever expanding library of Trumpian crimes.
“If the American people had known what we did at the time of the election, they would have been appalled.” Former FBI official Strzok recounts the events of 2016.
One of many FBI executives fired for bringing his inquiries too close to the Oval Office, Strzok delivers the news that Trump was indeed under investigation even as a candidate—and then as president. The reasons are almost self-evident to anyone who remembers that he publicly asked for Russian help in winning his post, following it up almost immediately after being impeached with requests for help to another foreign power for the current electoral cycle. Strzok was in charge of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s infamous emails. “The fact is that if Clinton’s email had been housed on a State Department system,” writes the author, “it would have been less secure and probably much more vulnerable to hacking.” All the same, they released a finding calling it “extremely careless,” which certainly cost Clinton votes. The attention devoted to scrutinizing Clinton’s email, Strzok suggests, may well have kept the agency from spotting signs of Russian interference until it was too late. The author takes pains to clarify that the Mueller Report by no means exonerates Trump, though Trump’s attorney general interpreted it that way; he adds that the FBI could certainly have dealt damage to Trump’s campaign, as it did Clinton’s, simply by hinting at what it knew about his ties to Russia. Among Trump’s failings, however, has been his habit of underestimating the abilities and powers of the intelligence community as well as his penchant to ignore good advice—e.g., when his aides urged him not to congratulate Putin on winning his own rigged election, Trump did so anyway. Strzok corroborates numerous other accounts of Trump’s malfeasance, and he worries that Russian interference will be even more pronounced in the 2020 race given “Donald Trump’s willingness to further the malign interests of one of our most formidable adversaries, apparently for his own personal gain.”
An important addition to the ever expanding library of Trumpian crimes.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-23706-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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