Essential reading for a key moment in our (currently) democratic nation.
A veteran Supreme Court lawyer presents the case for impeachment in a manner that adheres to the facts and the law without engaging in political spin.
Writing with Koppelman, Katyal, the former acting solicitor general of the U.S., calls himself “an extreme centrist” and insists, “I am not a partisan.” He has “argued more United States Supreme Court cases than just about anyone (39 and counting).” He has also taught frequent seminars on impeachment that demonstrate the seriousness of the procedure and why it has been taken so infrequently. Nonetheless, he insists that “we have no choice but to impeach and remove President Trump” based on the charges resulting from a whistleblower’s alert to a phone conversation with Ukrainian officials. Others—particularly Republicans—believe otherwise, that this was a minor matter blown way out of proportion. This book proceeds methodically to build a step-by-step case for the jury of the American reading public. Katyal maintains that “this is as simple a case as you will find” and that “the facts are clear.” Those facts are that Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of a political rival and candidate for the presidency, before the U.S. would resume aid to that country, that this constituted both bribery and solicitation of foreign interference, and that he then attempted a coverup and obstruction of justice. Each of these elements, argues the author convincingly, qualifies under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that impeachment requires. Furthermore, Katyal contends that such intervention before the 2020 presidential election is necessary because the charges show the president’s willingness to subvert that process. He hopes that “impeachment could bring out the best of America” as the public weighs the facts of the case and forces its elected representatives to do the same. Not all will agree that the case is as cut and dried as the author makes it, but he provides both a framework and foundation for discussion—and plenty of facts to support his powerful case.
Essential reading for a key moment in our (currently) democratic nation.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-358-39117-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2019
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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