by Tolu’ A. Akinyemi ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 22, 2023
An incisive, expert-level analysis of financial crime in free verse.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
Akinyemi explores risk, corruption, and accountability in this book, which blends financial crime investigation, sociopolitical commentary, and poetry.
In this unusual collection, Akinyemi opens with a refrain of “Know Your Customer,” a poem that weaves personal identity (e.g., a mother’s maiden name) with financial industry regulatory standards, such as “identify and verify.” In “Holes,” the speaker looks for red flags indicating money laundering. These illicit funds seek shelter and erasure of their origins. Next, the speaker must untangle the “ownership chain” to reveal the person benefitting from unlawful transactions. “Risk Appetite” considers variable risk tolerance thresholds; at its extreme, risk tolerance “hits imaginary roofs / and catapults into sinking sands.” The work notes that mitigating risk is crucial for companies, lest they face losing their reputations or going broke paying regulatory fines. Sanctions are mocked as ineffective, “a comedy show.” In “Slave of the Tax Master,” the speaker calls out the hypocrisy of a system that taxes everyday people “to the bones” while policymakers take advantage of offshore tax havens. Akinyemi likens “dirty money” to a river that crosses borders before merging with “clean money.” The poet concludes with “Compliance Poet,” which reflects on the convergence of his professional paths as an anti-money laundering specialist and author. Akinyemi’s unconventional, intriguing collection combines technical subject matter with poetic style in lines like, “Come to this compliance table cleaner / than sparkling water. / We are tilling the soil / for suspicious activity.” Most poems also include helpful footnotes. However, industry-specific acronyms (FATF, AML, and CFT) and financial regulation lingo—for example, “The three lines of defence (or 3LOD) model is an accepted regulated framework designed to facilitate an effective risk management system”—may lose readers.
An incisive, expert-level analysis of financial crime in free verse.Pub Date: June 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781913636449
Page Count: 84
Publisher: The Roaring Lion Newcastle
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 18, 2025
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
26
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Share your opinion of this book
More by Ezra Klein
BOOK REVIEW
by Ezra Klein
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.