Book: thumbs-up. Subject: frown emoji.
An insider’s account of some very bad goings-on at Facebook/Meta.
Former New Zealand diplomat Wynn-Williams talked her way into an ambassadorial job of sorts at Facebook on the grounds that it was likely to become a political giant. She landed in 2011, thinking that the politics she had in mind would be for the good and that part of her job would be to keep the tech behemoth independent: “Information is power. At some point, governments would want to control it.” Warning signs otherwise were there from the start: An outwardly apolitical Mark Zuckerberg decides that he wants to be seated next to Raúl Castro at a state dinner. (He flees when rebuffed by not just the Cuban leader but by Canada’s prime minister.) A German delegation in turn is spurned when it asks for content mediation to curb hate speech: “We failed when it mattered,” Wynn-Williams writes. “With the country we most needed to win over.” Small wonder, she adds, that Germany opened an investigation on Facebook, which, jumping ahead in her narrative, explains why a company board member proposed courting far-right actors such as MAGA and Germany’s AfD—the thought being that less oversight over those who cozy up to them means more profit. China is the grand curiosity: “The mission of the company—making the world more open and connected—is the exact opposite of what the Chinese Communist Party wants, particularly under President Xi Jinping,” she writes at a time when the company is going hammer and tongs for market there. And now, the author says, Facebook is “dangling the possibility that it’ll give China special access to users’ data.” Among all this intrigue, Wynn-Williams’ accusation of some spectacularly louche and horndoggish behavior among the top brass seems an afterthought, but that gossipy element is there, giving a human touch to “these people and their lethal carelessness.”
Book: thumbs-up. Subject: frown emoji.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781250391230
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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