One doesn’t have to admire Reagan to concur with Christie’s disdain for the “blustery loser” in today’s headlines.
A long, revealing, and sometimes sort-of-correct stump speech in honor of “the last great president.”
The title seems a neat twist on the fundamentalist what-would-Jesus-do trope, but in his way, Christie is just as much a true believer, one who longs to be seated at the right hand of Reagan. His hero isn’t just the Great Communicator; he’s also the great uniter (who inarguably pulled a lot of white supremacists and government haters), the great statesman, the great friend to all people everywhere. Christie cuts to the chase: “His version of conservatism very much included achieving stuff.” Stuff? Though he had to be dragged to it kicking and screaming, he actually pushed through a little funding for AIDS research, “despite his generational misunderstandings about the origins of the virus.” He may even have saved us from being obliterated by nuclear war. Christie does acknowledge the disaster of the Iran-Contra affair, which “provoked bipartisan uproar, launched televised congressional hearings, and…delivered federal felony indictments to a wide swath of Reagan’s foreign policy team.” Apart from that, “by the usual standards of twentieth-century America, Reagan had had a remarkably scandal-free administration.” There’s the rub and the point, for Christie unapologetically contrasts the presidency of Reagan with the sordidly corrupt presidency of Donald Trump, who at every turn the author presents as the anti-Reagan. Where Reagan saw hope in America and a beacon on every hill, Trump’s “squinting eyes conjured up the exact opposite.” Where Reagan sought to serve the people, Trump sought to help himself to the public trough. As on the campaign trail, Christie is snide, indignant, and excoriating, and his lashings of vituperation are the best and most convincing part of this otherwise undistinguished book.
One doesn’t have to admire Reagan to concur with Christie’s disdain for the “blustery loser” in today’s headlines.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781982160661
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
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