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PIETY & POWER

MIKE PENCE AND THE TAKING OF THE WHITE HOUSE

A useful portrait of an enigmatic politician.

A biography of the vice president, who has consistently demonstrated his “chameleon properties.”

In his work for the Associated Press, CNN, and the Indianapolis Star, journalist LoBianco has observed Mike Pence’s political career both as governor of Indiana and vice president. In his evenhanded debut book, the author sometimes offers his own commentary but mostly allows the facts to speak for themselves. (Pence declined to be interviewed for the book.) In The Shadow President (2018), Michael D’Antonio and Peter Eisner created a picture of Pence as an ineffective lawyer and governor and hypocritical vice president whose brand of Christian faith has led him to consistently condemn homosexuality and abortion. The co-authors argued that Pence could be considered an insignificant public figure with one exception: creating a persona as a radio talk show host in Indiana after losing two attempts to get elected to the House of Representatives; the show provided Pence a base that helped him gain entry to the House on his third attempt. LoBianco makes a similar argument, noting Pence’s “self-affixed Christian-first label” and his long-held, unswerving belief that the God of an inerrant Bible has preordained his path to the presidency. LoBianco is especially effective in explaining how his rigid beliefs receive daily affirmation from Pence’s wife, Karen. In convincing detail, the author shows how Karen made more final decisions about policy during Pence’s governorship than Pence did. As the author writes, his subjugation to Karen’s directions have likely carried over to his role as Donald Trump’s vice president. Despite offering copious evidence and periodic interpretations, LoBianco reiterates throughout the narrative that Pence is the “ultimate political shapeshifter,” especially compared to other elected politicians. The author presents the possibility that Pence could serve a second term if Trump wins in 2020 and then seek the presidency in 2024.

A useful portrait of an enigmatic politician.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-06-286878-7

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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INTO THE WILD

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990). 

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-42850-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995

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