A well-intentioned but prosaic book.
Tales of community activists who salvaged their neighborhoods from natural disaster and governmental neglect in New Orleans.
After participating in a Harvard fellowship to volunteer with and research the stories of Hurricane Katrina victims, Wooten (co-author: No One Had a Tongue to Speak: The Untold Story of One of History’s Deadliest Floods, 2011) moved to New Orleans to more fully immerse himself in the community’s rebuilding efforts. Focusing on five distinct neighborhoods, he allows residents and organizers to convey their dismay at government failure, their pride in their communities, and their resilience in tackling unwieldy projects, from gutting damaged homes to applying for charter school status. Many of these neighborhoods were marked for “redevelopment” by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, an ill-conceived mayoral project that essentially recommended that neighborhoods like the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward be bulldozed and turned into parks. Facing these kinds of odds, the scrappy New Orleanians who refused to kowtow to city officials and outside consultants command the utmost respect. They also provide excellent examples of how communities facing similar threats (blight, poverty, environmental problems and crime) can work together to improve living conditions, whether or not natural disasters loom on the horizon. Readers won’t fault Wooten for his sincerity in gathering these stories, and many of his subjects possess strong voices—e.g., octogenarian Phil Harris, who pragmatically speaks of saving his wife and son from the floodwaters, and Father Vien The Nguyen, who narrates the history of New Orleans’ significant Vietnamese population. However, potentially compelling tales often get lost in endless re-creations of committee meetings, charter school board applications and fundraising rallies. The author’s tone is a problem as well. Wooten vacillates between addressing a general audience interested in the social ramifications of Katrina and presenting an overview of urban planning better suited to a civics textbook.
A well-intentioned but prosaic book.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4463-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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