A potent mix of theory and practice that runs from didactic to inspiring. A good addition to the growing library on fighting...
A leading scholar of democracy combines his academic research with his direct experience to piece together a wide-ranging study of the creation—and possible destruction—of that specific form of governance.
Although aware that the United States has termed itself a democracy since the 18th century, Diamond (In Search of Democracy, 2015, etc.), the founding editor of the Journal of Democracy and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, writes that the nation never achieved that goal until 1965, with the Voting Rights Act, when meaningful voting rights became a reality for all adults, at least in theory. “Only in 1968,” he writes, “could an American presidential election plausibly be, for the first time, called free and fair.” Despite disagreement within the academy and within councils of government, the author maintains that democracy is necessary before a nation lays claim to freedom for its citizens. A durable democratic government must be broadly recognized as legitimate. Diamond has been disseminating such a message for decades, but he decided to write his latest book after Donald Trump became president—after suffering the “anguished knowledge of what his presidency would mean for democracy around the world.” As the author clearly shows, Trump is not just a threat to American democracy; he also plays an influential role in the retreat from freedom besetting numerous nations. Diamond is worried that the authoritarian governments of China and Russia are actively seeking to halt nascent democratic movements by encouraging other autocrats in nations such as Hungary, Turkey, and the Philippines. What to do with such complicated forces at work? The author suggests numerous potential promising paths, including a switch to a parliamentary form of government, specific measures to diminish the corruption pervasive in kleptocracies, and transparent elections that feature ranked-choice voting. Diamond is most comfortable with suggestions that would revive U.S. democracy before mounting sustained initiatives elsewhere.
A potent mix of theory and practice that runs from didactic to inspiring. A good addition to the growing library on fighting authoritarianism.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-56062-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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