An earnest dissection of the threat Trump poses to our democracy.
The former House Republican Conference leader’s account of the tumult surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Early on, Cheney, the former Wyoming representative who helped lead the House January 6 Committee, writes, “We cannot make the grave mistake of returning Donald Trump—the man who caused January 6—to the White House, or to any position of public trust, ever again.” The author provides a highly detailed account of the chaotic events that transpired from Election Day 2020 through the committee’s preparation for the televised hearings (much of the final section reads like an expansive transcript of the hearings, along with commentary) to the present moment and the risks the nation still faces. Following recent titles by other Republican insiders recounting these activities—e.g., former Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s Renegade—Cheney’s account excels in its vivid portraits of Trump’s key enablers, the most reprehensible being Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and other members of the House Freedom Caucus, including the recently named House Speaker, Mike Johnson, who actively attempted to mislead House members with false claims about the integrity of the election. While readers will likely commend Cheney’s genuine efforts to identify and aggressively oppose the threats to democracy posed by Trump during the 2020 election, what they may find sorely lacking is deeper self-reflection on her prior political views—the kind of personal history and soul-searching that distinguishes Kinzinger’s book. Such a history would include any justification for her having voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020; after all, it’s not as though his true colors weren’t apparent during his first term in office—and even before. Still, Cheney’s book is a useful document as we continue to sort through the ramifications of the Jan. 6 attack.
An earnest dissection of the threat Trump poses to our democracy.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780316572064
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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