A dispiriting, often sordid, page-turner.
Yet more clear evidence of a highly dysfunctional administration.
Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, 2018, etc.), who admits a “train-wreck fascination with Trump,” begins the new installment of his gossip-filled exposé in February 2018, as Trump embarks on his second year. Anticipating questions about his often inflammatory assertions, the author writes that he has provided anonymity to sources who requested it and tried to confirm information with multiple sources, but he still expects some individuals—as they did in response to his previous book—to “disavow the truth they have told.” One, though, “stood by his remarks in Fire and Fury without complaint, quibble, or hurt feelings”: Steve Bannon, who Wolff claims is “the most clear-eyed interpreter of the Trump phenomenon I know.” Although Bannon left the administration in 2017, the author portrays him as a master manipulator with wide-ranging connections, “the best soldier in Trump’s army” during the midterm campaigns; the “primary purveyor of the caravan narrative” that Trump brought out to fire up his base, with direct influence on Sean Hannity, Trump’s confidant. In fact, Wolff reports, Bannon saw himself heading a presidential ticket with Hannity in 2020. The author solicits Bannon’s views on everything, including Robert Mueller, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort; Trump’s performance abroad, including the humiliating aftermath of his meeting with Putin; the choice of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court; Ivanka and Jared, whom Bannon disparages as “grifters”; and Nikki Haley’s decision to leave her post as U.N. ambassador, which Bannon deems “a precursor to the party’s loss of just about everyone with an education.” Overall, the author presents a portrait of the president that will come as no surprise to readers. Trump is ignorant of how government works, “incapable of admitting vulnerability,” a “compulsive, persistent” liar, easily distracted, and unable to absorb information from briefings. Wolff’s dismal report confirms the assessment that the Trump world contains “the greatest concentration of ignominious lowlifes, scammers, and con artists ever seen in national politics.”
A dispiriting, often sordid, page-turner.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-25382-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2019
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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