As Arizona goes, so goes the nation, according to this searing book of reportage from Phoenix.
Joe Arpaio liked to call himself “America’s toughest sheriff.” A New England transplant to Phoenix, he ran for sheriff at an age when most of his peers were retiring, winning on a law-and-order ticket that targeted undocumented immigrants. Journalists Sterling and Joffe-Block were there for much of Arpaio’s 24-year tenure, during which he became infamous for housing inmates in tents in the summer heat and serving them “gloppy, tasteless, and sometimes moldy” food. As the authors note, Arpaio was an early ally of Donald Trump. Importantly, he also set the stage for Trump by making villains of undocumented workers and by ignoring numerous court orders to cease race-based policing. In the end, that led to a conviction for contempt of court, which might have earned Arpaio jail time but instead led to a Trump pardon. Inarguably, Arpaio’s strong-arm tactics had an effect: “One estimate found that about 92,000 unauthorized immigrants of working age—about 17 percent of that cohort—left Arizona between 2008 and 2009.” Sterling and Joffe-Block diligently chronicle the work of immigration rights activists and undocumented workers while also focusing closely on Arpaio, who, like Trump, professed to despise the press while craving its attention. They also turn in shocking stories of official malfeasance, including a case where a sheriff’s deputy victimized innocent suspects and malefactors alike, stealing a garage full of evidence, including Schedule 1 narcotics. Yet he was kept on the force because he produced “high stats,” immigrant arrests that enhanced Arpaio’s bragging rights. Finally turned out of office, Arpaio lost a primary race for U.S. Senate to a Republican candidate who herself lost because Arizona was turning blue—one reason for which, the authors hint, was a direct repudiation of Arpaio and his policies.
Though it runs a touch long, this is a work of exemplary reporting.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-520-29408-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
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All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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