Authoritative, essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the frightening breadth and depth of Putin’s methods.
A disturbing account that peels back the layers of the Putin regime to reveal the corruption and violence at the core.
Once a wealthy oligarch and a player in Moscow politics, Khodorkovsky ran afoul of Putin in 2003 and spent 10 years in prison before leaving the country in exile. In this remarkable book, co-written by British journalist Sixsmith, he interweaves the story of Putin’s rise with a personal account of his own fall. The book could have easily turned into a conspiratorial rant, but the text remains focused. Khodorkovsky was an excellent student, studying chemical engineering, and his entrepreneurial streak allowed him to take advantage of the convulsions of the Gorbachev era, first with a bank and later an oil company, Yukos. His wealth led to close contact with Boris Yeltsin, and he even served as an economic adviser. When Putin took over, Khodorkovsky was initially hopeful, but he soon realized the danger of his authoritarian ambitions. Khodorkovsky’s criticisms of Putin, and of the level of corruption in the inner circle, led to his arrest and decade in prison. “You don’t even need to fall out with them to be targeted,” he writes. “They can simply take a fancy to your business or your property. And once they have you in their sights, there is no way out. You have no one to turn to, no one to help you—not the law, not the courts, not the media, not your bosses or your neighbors.” Khodorkovsky eventually fled to London, where he founded the Open Russia movement to promote liberal reform. For this, he earned a price on his head. He devotes the closing chapter to his hope that Russia might eventually become more democratic, although this sounds more idealistic than likely, and Khodorkovsky admits that Putin’s rhetoric of returning Russia to the glory days of Stalin’s time strikes a popular chord.
Authoritative, essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the frightening breadth and depth of Putin’s methods.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-28559-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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