An intriguing window into Republican primary politics.
Spurlino shares lessons learned from an unsuccessful congressional bid in this debut political memoir.
As the old adage goes, failure is a better teacher than success. That’s the premise of this memoir by a businessman who ran for Congress in 2016. “I lost,” writes Spurlino in his introduction. “I didn’t lose in the general election. I lost in the Republican primary. I finished fourth, receiving only 7 percent of the vote. That’s not the typical profile of someone who writes a book about politics.” Even so, his frontline perspective offers insight into the modern American political campaign: who runs for office, how and why they run, how they win, and—more often—how they lose. The author decided to throw his hat into the ring after learning that his congressman, Speaker of the House John Boehner, had announced his retirement. He then began the strange, sometimes comical process of hiring a campaign team, staking out official positions on major issues (many of them more conservative than his actual beliefs), paying someone to perform opposition research on himself, filming an announcement video, and drumming up political support. Spurlino’s insider’s view convinced him that the American campaign system needs profound changes, both in laws governing elections and in the culture of party politics. Spurlino’s prose is conversational and direct, and his persona is often that of a naïve Everyman learning about politics in real time, which sometimes makes for amusing reading: “I was a little surprised that Israel would be a campaign issue,” he writes; but later he found out that the other candidates likely wouldn’t be attending an upcoming event organized by pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and that his presence there could win him some votes: “And with that, I officially became a supporter of AIPAC and Israel.” Spurlino’s after-the-fact suggestions for improving the political system—including ranked-choice voting—will likely divide his readership. The book’s greatest value is the way in which it charts the Trump-ification of the Republican Party over the course of 2016.
An intriguing window into Republican primary politics.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63755-236-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
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