An effective blend of political analysis and personal stories, tied together at the epicenter of crisis management.
A behind-the-scenes look inside the White House Situation Room.
Stephanopoulos, co-host of Good Morning America and author of All Too Human, served as Bill Clinton’s senior adviser for policy and strategy. His position and history as a Washington, D.C., insider allows him to examine a series of crises through the story of the Situation Room, located in the subterranean bowels of the White House complex. The author explains that the room was set up in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, which John F. Kennedy blamed on poor advice. The idea was to centralize information collection and give the president a dedicated space for decision-making, with a permanent staff of geopolitical experts. Stephanopoulos tracks events ranging from the defeat in Vietnam, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, to 9/11, examining the management styles of the presidents and other key figures and punctuating the story with interviews wherever possible. A peculiar element is that, despite its importance, for a long time, the place itself was unimpressive, much like a dull corporate meeting room. New communication equipment and technology were gradually added, and by the time of the operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden, the president could watch events unfold in real time. In fact, the problems of the current era are information overload and the temptation to micromanage. In early 2023, the room was remodeled into “a digitally advanced, ergonomically designed, smartly configured complex,” and it is now known as the WHSR (pronounced “whizzer”). This transformation was inevitable and necessary, although the author clearly feels a twinge of nostalgia. Recounting a history that might have been lost, Stephanopoulos presents an interesting package for political aficionados as well as general readers.
An effective blend of political analysis and personal stories, tied together at the epicenter of crisis management.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781538740767
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
