A gritty if tasteless and overblown recounting of one honest NYPD detective's investigation of one corrupt NYPD cop. This is hardly the stuff of legend, despite New York Daily News columnist McAlary's (Cop Shot, 1990) insistent invocation of Frank Serpico. Early in 1986, the Field Internal Affairs Unit received a tip that officer Michael Dowd and his partner, Gerald DuBois, serving in the 75th precinct in Brooklyn's East New York section, were ripping off drug dealers. A ``world-class dirtbag,'' according to one cop, Dowd had been involved in a number of disciplinary actions, including being sent to ``the Farm'' for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. ``The first time I saw Michael Dowd,'' said Detective Joe Trimboli, ``I knew he was dirty.'' But Trimboli, known as ``The Watcher,'' failed to prove the more serious allegations, such as snorting cocaine while on duty, accepting bribes, doing chores for drug dealers, and stealing money from prisoners and corpses. Instead, he nabbed Dowd for ``patrol violations,'' such as leaving his assigned area for lunch and wearing his hat backward. Dowd was, however, heavily involved with Joe Adonis, a low-level dealer working for Jose ``Chelo'' Montalvo, a drug lord from the Bronx, and was allegedly receiving $8,000 per week in bribes. Investigators in the DA's office for Suffolk County, Long Island, where Dowd lived, suspected the New York cop was dealing drugs and arrested him in May 1992. Although Trimboli's years of work didn't lead directly to Dowd's downfall, his reports substantiated many of the charges and made a guilty plea inescapable. Dowd was later charged with federal racketeering for accepting the bribes and is serving a 14-year sentence. McAlary's lurid writing—Dowd hung out in a bar where ``the lighting was as weak as the character in the room''—and his sensationalistic attempt to puff up one cop's downfall as indicative of all-pervasive police corruption make this a tough sell. (8 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-89736-5
Page Count: 277
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
