Revealing one outrage after another, McSwane's book should prompt congressional review and systemic reform.
A justifiably indignant investigation into the financial malfeasance and outright swindling that accompanied the Trump administration’s botched handing of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Award-winning ProPublica reporter McSwane scathingly unveils a “shady networks of brokers, scammers, investors, and profiteers who did insane things to get rich while our nation suffered an incalculable loss of life and global standing.” Some acts weren’t exactly insane since those profiteers gamed a system already rigged, thanks to the Trump administration, in their favor. One case involves an investor who had landed a $34.5 million federal contract to provide 6 million N95 masks. Never mind that he “had zero experience sourcing medical supplies” and “knew little about how to navigate the supply chain, which almost always leads back to China, where American manufacturers had outsourced to keep wages low, prices attractive, and profits high.” He simply bid on the job, and the contract was awarded without competition. In the end, the masks—which should have cost about $1 apiece but were subject to exorbitant price gouging that “would swiftly result in criminal charges during a localized catastrophe, such as a hurricane”—never materialized. The scammer was far from alone in thinking that he could snag a contract, find a supplier, and deliver goods that were simply unavailable. Untold numbers of dollars went out the door, some by way of Cabinet member Peter Navarro, whom McSwane deems with nice irreverence “the Nicolas Cage of modern politics, unhinged but not always off his mark, beholden only to himself, amused by his own stunts.” Thanks to neglect of federal stockpiles and the deluge of rip-off artists, when Covid-19 arrived, “the United States had on hand just 1 percent of what we needed for the coming onslaught.” The situation has since improved, no thanks to Trump and the con artists who, if they came through at all, often delivered counterfeit goods that were useless and even dangerous.
Revealing one outrage after another, McSwane's book should prompt congressional review and systemic reform.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982177-74-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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