A must-read for students of the Trump years and their dreary denouement.
A scorching exposé of the inner workings of the two impeachments of Donald Trump, driven less by constitutional principle than by political calculation.
At every moment of the first Trump impeachment, write veteran political reporters Bade and Demirjian, the principal players in both parties gamed outcomes in an effort to inflict maximal damage on each other. “While Democrats said they wanted bipartisanship,” they write, “when presented with ways to achieve it, they chose paths that guaranteed the opposite.” GOP figures from Mitch McConnell on down forgot their scruples and closed ranks to defend the indefensible. Nancy Pelosi took dangerous procedural shortcuts and effectively hamstrung the House prosecutors’ ability to present an airtight case—and never properly responded to Trump’s refusal to hand over subpoenaed documents. Moderate Republicans such as Jaime Herrera Beutler, who might have voted to impeach, were pushed away by the determination of Democrats to go it alone, lending the proceedings an air of secrecy. If a moderate were rebuffed, then Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy had no problem steering the rest of the conference into opposition. The second impeachment, against the backdrop of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, was even less well managed. Most Republicans argued that Trump won the 2020 election, while ace Democratic prosecutor Adam Schiff pressed for recourse to the 25th amendment rather than a slower impeachment trial. “At the speaker’s personal request,” write the authors, “he’d been making the case…that if they went after the president in his waning days in office, it would look like they were just trying to keep him from running again.” In the end, Bade and Demirjian argue in this comprehensive narrative, both sides of the aisle compromised and devalued the constitutional power of impeachment, opening the door to its future use as “an everyday vehicle to express the heights of partisan rage.”
A must-read for students of the Trump years and their dreary denouement.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-304079-3
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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