A searing yet optimistic account of how true constitutional patriots preserved American democracy.
A revealing book about how government professionals—the so-called “deep state”—kept the Trump administration from wreaking even more havoc than it did.
While bound to be taken in some circles as an apology for Democrats, this close-up report of the chaotic Trump presidency is a solid, well-reported record of applied American patriotism. From numerous interviews as well as evidence already publicly available, political scientist Rothkopf, author of Traitor: A History of American Betrayal From Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, among other books, builds an unchallengeable case that a host of government officials “worked together to keep a dangerous, unhinged, ill-prepared president and his closest allies from doing irreparable damage to the United States, its people, our allies, and to the planet as a whole.” It’s the best work yet on how federal employees, military as well as civilian, helped preserve democracy from the “dark state” during the gravest constitutional peril the U.S. has faced since 1860. As with the Watergate crisis, whose full story took a half-century to be known, the history of the Trump presidency will remain incomplete for decades. Yet while this can’t be a full treatment, Rothkopf adds useful texture as well as new, sometimes striking, details to what’s already known about how Republican, Democratic, and nonpartisan officials worked in the shadows to limit damage from the Trump administration’s incompetence and corruption. In the most striking chapter, the author offers astonishing new evidence about how senior military officers, such as James Mattis and Mark Milley, accepted orders but slow-walked them to uselessness to prevent the corruption of both the military command structure and its ethos at the hands of amateurs, opportunists, and what witnesses termed “morons” and “cowards.” Rothkopf also rescues the reputations of some officials, such as Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of homeland security, while further lowering those of White House advisers Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner.
A searing yet optimistic account of how true constitutional patriots preserved American democracy.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5417-0063-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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