A sturdy deep dive into the Biden approach to international relations.
An examination of world affairs in the post-Trump years.
Ward, an award-winning journalist specializing in national security, notes that foreign policy played only a modest role in the 2016 election, and Trump limited himself to the lowbrow jingoism that delighted his followers: portraying dictators as admirable leaders who get things done and immigrants as threats to the nation. The author begins with a pertinent question: “How would Biden, a president who came of age in a time when America was the undisputed superpower, attempt to make it genuinely great again—respected and trusted by its allies, feared by its enemies, and no longer willing to kowtow to the despots that Trump seemed so enamored of?” When he took office, the new president and his administration focused on “foreign policy for the middle class,” negotiating a five-year extension of the nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, thus making the world a little safer and suggesting the possibility of productive talks. Soon after, Biden was forced to confront the disastrous situation in Afghanistan. An advocate of reduced involvement in Afghanistan ever since his years as Obama’s vice president, he proceeded with the withdrawal. Despite 20 years and more than $1 trillion of assistance, few had confidence in the Afghan army, but U.S. intelligence determined that it could resist for several years. Few officials foresaw such a rapid collapse, and Ward’s cogent account of what followed makes for simultaneously illuminating and painful reading. But memories of foreign debacles are short, and the administration addressed another massive problem when intelligence officials determined, six months before it occurred, that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. Readers know what happened next, so Ward’s expert account of earnest diplomacy and consultation with allies lacks urgency, but history buffs will be fascinated nonetheless.
A sturdy deep dive into the Biden approach to international relations.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593539071
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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