Political maneuvering rarely begets a page-turner, but Kimmage’s insightful account is just that.
The background to one of the most dangerous geopolitical clashes of the post–Cold War era.
Kimmage, a history professor and author of Abandonment of the West, admits that he is not an expert on Ukraine. As a scholar in political science, however, he provides well-informed and realistic, if bleak, context for current events. Russia’s 2022 invasion, writes the author, marked the end of “three of the most peaceful, most promising, most prosperous decades in European history.” Upon Ukrainian independence in 1991, U.S. officials treated the new nation lazily, overpromising (dangling but refusing NATO membership in 2008) and then refusing to arm it after Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014. With no nostalgia for communism but yearning (along with most Russians) to make his nation powerful again on the global stage, Putin noted that NATO had also declined to admit Georgia in 2008. A few months later, his army invaded Georgia, and America and its NATO allies expressed outrage but took no action. In 2014, the Russian army occupied Crimea and other areas in eastern Ukraine. Most Russians were pleased, while the U.S. and other powers expressed outrage and imposed sanctions but failed to take real action. Putin regularly proclaims that the U.S. is an empire in decline. Kimmage admits that this is a reasonable impression, observing that 21st-century America has stumbled badly through two stalemated wars, a depression, and a disastrous presidency. Having triumphed in two earlier wars, Putin had no doubt he was on a roll, but matters did not work out so well in his third. In a fitting conclusion to his well-researched book, the author expresses mild approval of Biden’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but he knows too much history to predict a satisfying outcome.
Political maneuvering rarely begets a page-turner, but Kimmage’s insightful account is just that.Pub Date: March 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780197751794
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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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