Readers seeking an overview of the Mueller Report that constantly cuts to the chase will find this just the ticket.
The Washington Post serves up a lively, graphic version of the foundational document in the current presidential impeachment process.
Issued in April 2019, the so-called Mueller Report investigated Donald Trump’s ties to Russia before, during, and after the 2016 campaign. Although its subject trumpeted that the report exonerated him, the Post team, headed by investigative political reporter Rosalind Helderman and augmented by Israeli graphic artist and illustrator Jan Feindt, observes at the start that the report made two things clear: It established that the Russian effort to influence the election was “sweeping and systematic” and left open the question of whether Trump committed a crime for trying to obstruct the investigation. This interference was well known long before Mueller set pen to paper, but Republican leaders in Congress swept it under the rug. Feindt has a straightforward editorial style of drawing that captures Trump’s every barking snarl and pouting snit. While the storyline is eminently faithful to Mueller’s more detailed documentation, the writers and artist bring drama to it by showing the many points of resistance within Trump’s staff—Chris Christie deciding he would not act as a shill to try to swing James Comey into Trump’s camp, deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland’s refusal to lie for Trump in exchange for an ambassadorial appointment, which, Reince Priebus feared, would “be seen as a quid pro quo,” a term much in the news of late. In an analysis, Helderman and her associates observe that these aides and staffers restrained Trump, for they quickly determined that “if they ignored or delayed the president’s most impetuous orders, his mood and attention would often shift.” Of course, those staffers are now gone, and so are the restraints they imposed. The illustrated report closes, as did the original, with an admonition that has doubtless troubled Trump’s sleep ever since: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime…it also does not exonerate him.”
Readers seeking an overview of the Mueller Report that constantly cuts to the chase will find this just the ticket.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982149-27-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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