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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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