A heartfelt plea to legislators and the constituents who elect them.
A longtime senator and former vice presidential nominee suggests a way to make government work.
Former Connecticut senator Lieberman draws on his 40-year career to advocate for centrism as a way to overcome insidious partisanship. “America’s freedom, security, and prosperity,” he writes, “depend on a healthy political center, a center that avoids chaotic and self-destructive extremes and instead produces progress and stability.” Reprising successes and failures, he ends each chapter with “Lessons for Centrists.” The passage of the Clean Air Act in 1990, for example, taught him that “sometimes a higher purpose can motivate great legislative accomplishments.” The act received bipartisan support because most members of Congress “could see that the result of not doing so would be thousands of premature deaths in America and the destruction of some beautiful natural resources.” As a freshman senator, Lieberman joined the Democratic Leadership Council, whose aims were “to move the Democratic Party back to the center” and “to reconnect the Party to middle-class America.” The author praises Bill Clinton for his alliance with Newt Gingrich, enabling passage of the Balanced Budget Act and Criminal Justice Reform Bill. Lieberman’s reputation as a centrist made Al Gore tap him as running mate, and Gore’s loss taught Lieberman that the Electoral College needs to be repealed. Partisanship—fueled by Gore’s defeat—deepened after the 9/11 attacks and has not abated. After losing a primary in 2006, Lieberman learned “that American politics had changed.” As an Independent, he won reelection: “Third parties,” he writes, “are a good way to disrupt the partisan duopoly of Democrats and Republicans.” He now serves as chair of No Labels, an organization founded in 2010, which endorses centrist candidates and has given rise to the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus. Centrism, he concedes, “is not a new wonder drug” but a possible step to functioning government.
A heartfelt plea to legislators and the constituents who elect them.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63576-904-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Diversion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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