Federal judge, professor (Univ. of Chicago Law School), and prolific author (The Economics of Justice, 1981, etc.) Posner presents an investigation into l’affaire Lewinsky that is both scholarly and approachable. His findings? We may have made both too much and too little of the whole sordid mess, and the majority of those involved proved themselves to often be fools, knaves, and even cowards. Upon reviewing the president’s actions after his affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed, Posner argues that Clinton did indeed commit crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice. Yet the complexity of Clinton’s impeachment revolves around whether criminality per se reaches the level of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” for which constitutionally a president may be removed. The issues get further muddied when one considers the —exemplary moral duties— of the presidency: did Clinton violate his duties as moral leader of the country? Probably, says Posner, but pragmatically speaking—and Posner is above all else a pragmatist, concerned with the practical over legal and moral abstraction—the union seems to have remained intact. Such are the issues with which Posner deals, but his stronger concerns are with the institutional weaknesses the impeachment process revealed: an independent counsel office that seemed driven by a need to harass public officials, a Congress that could not conduct an impeachment that appeared procedurally fair, public intellectuals and political pundits dragged into an irrational Manichaean debate over the morality of Clinton that did little to help anyone understand the intricacies of impeachment. In the end, the most lasting effect of Clinton’s impeachment ordeal may be the demystifying of elites. They are, after all, at time banal blunderers, just like the rest of us. Yet American democracy is strong enough to accept its leaders as peers, not paragons. Ironically, then, the very foolishness of political and intellectual elites may be their saving grace. Heavy going at times, but an invaluable and subtle judgment not only of Clinton, but of our society and those who rule us.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-674-00080-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
