One of the more esoteric pleasures of the end of the Cold War is the ability to get nearer the truth on espionage cases, and Barker has made the most of it in a deft, fast-paced, and balanced account of the US Marine guards scandal of 1987. Sgt. Clayton Lonetree was a Marine guard in the Moscow embassy with problems of character, intelligence, and behavior such that he in fact ``should never have been admitted to [Marine Security Guard] School . . ., and certainly should not have been sent to the most sensitive U.S. outpost in the world.'' The scandal erupted when Lonetree confessed to espionage activities. He had fallen in love with a Russian employee at the embassy, Violetta Seina, had passed on information, but felt the need to confess before he got in too deep. Another guard confessed to similar activities, two others corroborated the information, and for awhile it appeared that Soviet agents had been allowed to roam the embassy, causing ``irreparable damage'' to Western security. Suddenly, however, most of the case seemed to fall apart. The confessions of the other guards were retracted or otherwise discounted, and the main result of the assistance of high-profile lawyer William Kunstler was to get Lonetree, a Native American, a 30-year sentence, later reduced to 15 years (though with good behavior, he'll be released this spring). Everybody, it seems, wanted the story to go away: the Marines, for obvious reasons; the CIA, whose security lapses had contributed to the debacle; and the State Department, which had covered up 579 reassignments based on such security lapses over a seven-year period. Barker (The Broken Circle, 1992) interviewed everyone, including KGB officers and Violetta Seina's family, and does an excellent investigative job, even if he leaves some tantalizing themes unexplored, including CIA traitor Aldrich Ames's admitted request to his Soviet handlers, two months before Lonetree turned himself in, to divert attention from himself. This will be an indispensable source when Lonetree emerges from jail this year.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-81099-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
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