An authoritative overview of Pope Francis’ challenge to American hegemony.
A Roman Catholic journalist surveys the diplomatic agenda of Pope Francis in this political book.
Since the United States colonization of the Catholic-majority Philippines, writes Gaetan, the U.S.–Vatican relationship has been defined by “mutual skepticism between empires with deeply divergent worldviews.” Even when there have been moments of public cooperation, such as President Ronald Reagan’s partnership with Pope John Paul II in the Polish Solidarity movement, the Vatican’s refusal to “defer to the American view” of international relations has consistently defined their relationship. Even more than his predecessors, Pope Francis has vocally challenged America’s moral standing on issues that range from climate change and immigration to global finance and international arms deals. And though President Barack Obama’s relationship with the pontiff was “largely respectful,” the author describes a clandestine intelligence campaign spearheaded by the U.S. to discredit Jorge Bergoglio in the years preceding his becoming Pope Francis. But it was during President Donald Trump’s administration when Washington’s previously hushed critiques of the Vatican came to the fore. In particular, Senior Counselor to the President Steve Bannon (a paradoxical “thrice-divorced” traditional Catholic) launched a multimillion-dollar tour of European capitals and a right-wing media blitz to discredit Pope Francis. While the American establishment’s distrust of the Vatican is well covered in this engaging narrative, what makes this book special is its disclosure of the “behind-the-scenes” and “discreet” diplomatic actions of Pope Francis in China, Africa, and Eastern Europe that reveal the chasm of differences that exists between American and Vatican foreign policy. In a series of case studies of specific, 21st-century international conflicts, Gaetan convincingly demonstrates the pope’s keen diplomatic talents that effectively exploited “America’s loss of prestige” to pursue “alternative solutions” to world peace. As an international correspondent for the National Catholic Registerand contributor to Foreign Affairs, the author blends his expertise of geopolitics with access to the Vatican’s inner circles. This is an impressively well-researched book that features interviews with leading diplomatic insiders as well as information from the U.S. and Vatican archives. Though perhaps unnecessarily ad hominemin its barbs against the pope’s right-wing critics, this work delivers a superb analysis of his often unheralded diplomacy.
An authoritative overview of Pope Francis’ challenge to American hegemony.Pub Date: July 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5381-5014-6
Page Count: 476
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
