by Thomas B. Edsall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 2006
Impressive political analysis, anchoring electoral trends in the larger demographic, social, business and moral environment.
A penetrating examination of the Republicans’ permanent campaign—and the Democrats’ still-formidable disadvantages—from Washington Post senior political reporter Edsall.
Globalization and the civil-, women’s- and sexual-rights movements have polarized the electorate. Residential enclaves reinforce cultural values, consumer choices and religious convictions, leaving only a sliver of undecided voters. (One consequence: Republicans have come to rely more heavily on religious traditionalists, while secularists comprise a larger proportion of Democratic voters.) This means that since 2000, Republican strategy has switched from reaching out toward centrists to mobilizing the base. Judging from the massive evidence presented here, Karl Rove & Co. excel at politics as narrowcasting, with advertising targeted with a sophistication that has rattled Democrats. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ well-educated, affluent, tech-savvy elite emphasize culturally libertarian norms at the expense of their “disadvantaged and disproportionately minority” rank-and-file, who, Edsall observes, are badly served by Republican economic policies that stress individual risk-management. The author predicts that victories resulting from disgust with the Jack Abramoff scandal or even the Iraq war will prove ephemeral unless the Democrats improve their organizational infrastructure and neutralize “wedge” issues such as gay marriage that have helped the GOP achieve slim but decisive electoral victories for 40 years. Though not without ideological bias (e.g., are GOP loyalists really more likely to be driven by “anger points” than Democratic diehards?), Edsall presents a compelling analysis detailing the enormous institutional advantages enjoyed by the party in power. In contrast, Democratic special-interest groups have forced John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich to back off positions on affirmative action and abortion that clash with liberal orthodoxy. An intra-party insurgency, à la Goldwater and Reagan in the GOP, might be the only way to disrupt the Democrats’ ossification, Edsall speculates.
Impressive political analysis, anchoring electoral trends in the larger demographic, social, business and moral environment.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-465-01815-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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