A well-reasoned, occasionally shrill critique of the crypto universe.
Actor McKenzie continues his long-standing denunciation of cryptocurrency.
Matt Damon hawked crypto in ads during NFL games. Kim Kardashian made such extraordinary claims for it that it drew the attention of British regulators—though, in the U.S., “Kardashian’s promotion was initially met with typical regulatory silence.” Crypto seemed to be just the thing for the rich and powerful, a means of hiding transactions via the secrecy associated with a financial instrument that isn’t really a currency, at least by American law. Writing with financial journalist Silverman, McKenzie charges that since crypto behaves like a security, and an unregulated one at that, its price “jumps up and down like a rabbit on amphetamines.” Furthermore, the technology doesn’t scale well enough, it’s environmentally disastrous because it requires so much electricity to “mine,” and it’s surrounded by “fraudsters” and “con men.” Ethereum, founded in 2015 and the “second largest cryptocurrency as of this writing,” appears to be a smoke-and-mirrors operation, while Tether “was as if a random group of middling ne’er-do-wells had been issued their own money printer,” a bomb waiting to take down the entire system of casino capitalism. The author chronicles how some of the less cautious principals were taken down by international police forces, while others simply disappeared after their businesses evaporated—but not, he adds, before a few of them bought yachts. As for Kardashian, she was “fined $1.26 million by the SEC for her participation in shilling the shitcoin Ethereum Max”—even if she was just a willing tool and not herself a fraudster. “Would anyone in crypto ever see the inside of a jail cell?” asks McKenzie. At least since the author finished the book, it appears that at least one or two—Sam Bankman-Fried most notable among them—are on the way to the slammer.
A well-reasoned, occasionally shrill critique of the crypto universe.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781419766398
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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