A book that does good service in deepening our understanding of what lies behind the headlines.
A Ukrainian-born political scientist examines Russia’s centuries-long efforts to subject his homeland.
“Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the single most important event in Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,” writes Johns Hopkins professor Finkel. The tension between Ukraine and Russia, he writes, extends to the days of Kyivan Rus’, the founding state of both modern nations, which, subjugated by Mongol invaders in the medieval era, gave way to the Podunk village of Moscow. The Muscovite elites, by Finkel’s account, came to see themselves as the legitimate rulers of Rus’; especially in and after the expansionist regime of Peter the Great, Russia claimed Ukraine and proclaimed it as “Little Russia.” That campaign is ongoing. Today, writes Finkel in his evenhanded but clearly pro-Ukrainian account, Russia is attempting to suppress the Ukrainian language and eliminate local traditions. What is worse, he adds, is that Ukrainian children have been kidnapped by the hundreds of thousands and taken to Russia, there to be “forced to become Russian.” The intent is to erase Ukrainian identity generationally, and to some extent that horrific plan is succeeding. For all that, Finkel notes, the Russian invasion of 2022 has turned out to be disastrous: the Russian army and intelligence agencies assured Putin—who, by Finkel’s account, hatched at least some of his war plans as a kind of Covid-19 isolation project—that they would be greeted as liberators and that the Ukrainians would fold in days. Instead, Ukraine has resisted bravely, despite casualties. The costs are many and will be long-lasting, Finkel concludes: “Even if Russia apologizes and pays reparations, it will take decades for Ukraine’s wounds to heal.”
A book that does good service in deepening our understanding of what lies behind the headlines.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781541604674
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 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
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