A detailed, deeply reported portrait of a president willfully obstructing justice—with plenty of help.
A damning portrait of the “dangerous figure” occupying the White House.
But her emails! As New York Times reporter Schmidt writes, in its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for official correspondence, the FBI found more than 100 instances of sensitive data but no reason to believe that the breaches were intentional. It’s a far more benign case than any that the author offers with Donald Trump in the lead role. FBI director James Comey, who brought up the Clinton emails right before the 2016 election, suspected ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian help, the leitmotif of Schmidt’s book, but his cautious probes were of little help to those bound up in the “epic struggle to restrain an unbound president.” Granted, Comey busted Michael Flynn early on: “He lied to the FBI, and lies suggest cover-ups. Now, the relationship between Trump, his associates, and the Russians appeared even more suspicious.” Trump asked Comey to let Flynn slide, a wish he wouldn’t get for three years, when William Barr did just that, proving that “the president had bent Washington to his will.” Schmidt’s account embraces the star-crossed Mueller Report, its lead author hobbled by orders from above that he not investigate Trump’s financial ties to Russia, even as Trump constantly threatened to fire him. Central to the story is Trump’s former counsel, Don McGahn, “one of the main reasons Mueller knew so much.” McGahn cooperated with investigators (and, reluctantly and briefly, with Schmidt) even though he was fearful that Trump would fire him, too, before he could finish his project of packing the courts with conservative judges. In this complicated, twisting narrative, the author notes that while the Mueller Report is seemingly moot, it provides prosecutors the wherewithal to charge Trump with crimes after he leaves office—one reason for Trump not to want to do so.
A detailed, deeply reported portrait of a president willfully obstructing justice—with plenty of help.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984854-66-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
IN THE NEWS
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
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
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
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