An intelligent, witty perspective on the Trump years.
A veteran columnist chronicles the Donald Trump administration.
Even with his seasoned career as a senior producer for multiple PBS election specials and chief political correspondent of The Week Behind since 1995, nothing could prepare Connolly for the unprecedented nature of Donald Trump’s presidency. In this edited compilation of Connolly’s commentary, readers can relive the tumultuous Trump presidency through the lens of a battle-hardened political observer. From its opening page, which begins with a 2012 Sarasota County, Florida, “Statesmen of the Year Award,” the dissonance of Trump becomes wildly apparent, as the then-host of The Apprentice lambasted the media and political establishment for its unfair, “terrible” treatment of Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton—two figures he would himself harangue just four years later during his successful presidential campaign. Connolly’s smart, acerbic commentary walks readers through the Trump presidency, with concise editorials on the 2016 campaign, impeachment, mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, post-election tantrums that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, and more. Unsurprisingly, Trump presents as “mean, stupid, selfish…and unfit to be president.” Moreover, Connolly reminds readers that the ideologically nondescript Trump himself only took stances that favored his political or financial endeavors. On climate change, for instance, Trump fought “tooth and nail” against proposed wind turbines adjacent to his golf courses yet was equally passionate about building seawalls on an eroding Irish coast that threatened his property. While mostly centered on Trump, Connolly’s commentary also provides insights into his sycophants, like Sean Hannity, and rivals, like Hillary Clinton. Without minimizing the grave consequences of Trump’s actions, Connolly successfully balances astute analysis with humor. Ample altered images and other gags (such as a mock letter from Trump to Biden left in the Oval Office) complement this approach. Like all political commentary, particularly that which is read retrospectively, readers of all ideological persuasions will find passages that they politically disagree with, but many would likely agree that Connolly is a shrewd observer.
An intelligent, witty perspective on the Trump years.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2002
ISBN: 978-1-87-965229-3
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Dead Tree Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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