A significant, deeply reported portrait of the madness that continues to grip the White House.
Two Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post journalists deliver an almost day-to-day chronicle of the first three years of the Donald Trump presidency, and it’s a wild ride.
Disparaging accounts of presidents remain a publishing staple, and many close to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama were happy to reveal unflattering details. However, “unflattering” does not describe this portrait of Trump; “horrific” would be a better fit. Sadly, it’s entirely familiar. Marching through these pages is the same loose cannon who delighted audiences on The Apprentice. Trump made the rules, and those who didn’t measure up were berated, humiliated, and dismissed; no one questioned his authority. As president, the authors amply demonstrate, he still feels his word is law. When officials explain that an order—e.g., to “shut down” the border to keep out immigrants —would force them to break the law, his response was that he would pardon them. He admires dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and expresses contempt for democratically elected European leaders. Trump knows little history or geography and has no interest in learning. Aides quickly recognized that listening to others at conferences bored him, and he refused to read briefing materials. Flash cards got his attention. He hated to be contradicted and publicly reviled those who irritated him, from personal assistants to elderly statesmen and generals, and he fired advisers with abandon. Eventually, they adapted. “Trump began the year 2019 as a president unchained,” write the authors in a highly depressing, meticulously documented chronicle. “He had replaced a raft of seasoned advisors with a cast of enablers who…saw their mission as telling the president yes.” Readers as dismayed as the authors should read one or two anti-Trump diatribes—as one of the best, this one will do nicely—and then swear off the genre and get to work.
A significant, deeply reported portrait of the madness that continues to grip the White House.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984877-49-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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