The courts will decide, but here’s the scorecard to follow along at home.
A compendium of charges brought by grand juries and prosecutors against Donald Trump.
Four court cases, three prosecutors, 91 criminal charges, possible sentences totaling more than 700 years in prison: Trump has always dealt in superlatives, and those are the staggering numbers, well known to anyone who follows the news—though, as MSNBC host Velshi writes in his introduction, they are so many and so thoroughly laid out “that we risk becoming numb to their monumental importance.” There are the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and the cooking of corporate books to hide them, set in New York; those squirreled-away classified documents, bound for trial in Florida; the attempted coup on Jan. 6, which jurors in the District of Columbia will hear; and the tampering with the 2020 election in Georgia. Other suits are likely to follow, since Trump and various co-conspirators allegedly tried to overthrow the electors of Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and other states as well. As Velshi correctly notes, the charges against Trump and his alleged criminal colleagues are exquisitely detailed, ranging from macro level (“during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a [nuclear] ‘plan of attack’ that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official…[and] also said, ‘as president I could have declassified it’ ”) to the comparatively micro level, such as Trump’s insistence that Georgia voting official Ruby Freeman “was a professional vote scammer and a known political operative” or that “close to 5,000 dead people voted” in Georgia. The text features the thickest of legalese, but it’s well worth plowing through as a preview of coming attractions.
The courts will decide, but here’s the scorecard to follow along at home.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780063382589
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
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