Much more fun than the Mueller Report, but just as damning.
A fly-on-the-wall view of the 118th Congress, “a dysfunctional legislative body populated by a bunch of clowns.”
New York Times politics reporters Karni and Broadwater, who cover Congress, paint a detailed picture of what one veteran Republican representative called a “shitshow.” Few political leaders of any experience or maturity were much more complimentary: Liz Cheney remarked that “what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots,” while legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, asked how Congress broke so irreparably, quoted Ernest Hemingway on how bankruptcy happens: “gradually, then suddenly.” The gradual bit came about with the slow but immutable hardening of the right wing. All that was left then, when people such as Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert came rolling in, was for the “traditional” wing of the Republican Party to make concessions in the hope that it could retain power. Thus Kevin McCarthy’s devil’s bargain allowed a tiny fringe of the party—just 20 members—to dictate how the other 90 percent had to vote to please both themselves and Donald Trump. Gaetz, later much in the news for disgraceful reasons, “fed on conflict and, more quickly than any other Republican in office, took to Trump’s brand of scorched-earth politics.” He also edged McCarthy—by any measure one of the least capable persons to hold the job—out of his position as Speaker of the House, though none on the hard right were particularly pleased with the accommodationist who followed. Nancy Mace, George Santos, Jim Jordan, and many others come in for a drubbing, though Karni and Broadwater take time to review the endless series of Democratic Party mistakes that led to Joe Biden’s running against Trump in 2024 for as long as he did before dropping out.
Much more fun than the Mueller Report, but just as damning.Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9780593731260
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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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