A potent indictment that, lest anyone forget, underscores the dangers of Trump and Trumpism.
A compendium of Donald Trump’s massive campaign of fraud, grift, and democracy-killing mendacity, in and out of office.
It will come as no surprise that Trump built a tottering empire on lies. Though he doesn’t bring much fresh news, Lemire, White House bureau chief at Politico and host at MSNBC, does a useful service by assembling Trump’s fabrications in one place. The biggest of those lies is the constellation of assertions that the 2020 election was rigged and that Trump won. Of course, Trump, “the unlikeliest major party presidential nominee in more than a century,” was saying the same thing in 2016, preparing his base for what seemed the inevitable loss to Hillary Clinton. When he won, rather than admit that he might have been wrong, Trump continued to claim that the election was rigged, with illegal ballots that conspired to deprive him of winning the popular vote as well as the Electoral College. Even co-conspirator fellow grifter Steve Bannon, writes Lemire, commented, “Trump would say anything, he would lie about anything to win that moment, to win whatever exchange he was having at that moment.” As Lemire consistently and depressingly shows throughout his narrative, Trump blustered and lied about everything, and many of them “were just plain hard to categorize, like Trump’s insistence that windmills cause cancer.” The problem was, as Lemire documents, enough people believed his lies—whether the opening-moment-in-office lie that the inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s or the closing one that he had swept the ballot in 2020—that we wound up with Jan. 6. Where fresh news is in short supply, the author’s warnings run long. If anything, the lies will mount, as will the violence, even as a compliant and frightened Republican Party, which had its moment to stand up for democracy on Jan. 7, acquiesces to its lying master.
A potent indictment that, lest anyone forget, underscores the dangers of Trump and Trumpism.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81962-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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