by Eric Alterman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 11, 2020
For followers of politics and its practitioners, a capable, readable history of a mendacious tradition.
All presidents lie—but some much more bigly than others.
When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark out, writes Nation columnist and author Alterman, he told the new nation a white lie: The pathfinders were supposedly exploring the Mississippi River, a story that, Jefferson wrote, “masks sufficiently the real destination”—namely, the Pacific Ocean. Why would he lie about such a thing? Perhaps to disguise his intentions from prying enemies or perhaps just for the joy of it. Just so, by Alterman’s insightful account, Lyndon Johnson lied about nearly anything he could, though one of his biggest lies—concerning the Gulf of Tonkin incident—was based on such faulty information that he might not have known it was a lie. A Mexican invasion of the U.S., a promise not to raise taxes, weapons of mass destruction, oral sex in the Oval Office—presidents tell lies for manifold reasons, sometimes in the interest of national security, sometimes because the lie is the common coin of politics. There are exceptions. Even though “Barack Obama was not perfectly honest with the American people,” he seems to have corrected course once a misstatement or overstatement was brought to his attention; investigators discovered only six “outright falsehoods” in his entire second term. All this brings us, of course, to the undisputed king of presidential fabulists, Donald Trump, who lies as if lies were mother’s milk and who would confuse us were he ever to tell the truth. Alterman’s merry inventory—which includes detailed breakdowns of many of the 10,000 lies calculated to have come from Trump’s mouth between January 2017 and September 2019—is damning, just as much as is a critical moment at the end of the narrative, when MSNBC anchor Nichole Wallace finally closed a report by saying, “But the president isn’t telling the truth.”
For followers of politics and its practitioners, a capable, readable history of a mendacious tradition.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5416-1682-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 18, 2025
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
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Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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