A well-informed accounting of the nation under siege.
Another look at the chaos of the Trump administration and its disastrous handling of the pandemic.
Washington Post health policy reporter Abutaleb and the Post’s economics editor Paletta interviewed more than 180 people, including government officials, health experts, and advisers; reviewed text messages and internal documents; and read thousands of pages of emails to offer a thoroughly damning picture of America’s response to the pandemic. Their portrayal of a dysfunctional White House is likely to come as no surprise to readers who have followed mainstream news: “Much has been written about Trump’s temperament, paranoia, nonexistent attention span, disaffection, susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and disregard for facts,” the authors write. “It was all true.” He fostered a “strident, combative atmosphere,” pitting aides against one another “like roosters at a cockfight, gladiator matches for his amusement,” and he became incensed when anyone garnered more press attention than he did. Focused on reelection, he saw the virus as an annoying distraction and an increasing case count as a personal affront. He was abetted by staff who shared his disparagement of scientific and medical advice, feared for their jobs, or were “fluent in the kind of sycophancy Trump required”—or all of the above. From the first, the response was fraught with hostility, tension, and the turmoil that occurs when no one is in charge: not Health and Human Services director Alex Azar, an arrogant micromanager; not CDC director Robert Redfield, too unassertive to take on the president; not physicians Deborah Birx or Anthony Fauci, who incited such hatred that they were inundated with death threats. “The whole pandemic response,” the authors reveal, “was managed through power, intimidation, and bullying,” and “deep polarization” in government led to “even deeper political divisions across the country.” The authors intend their report as a warning for the future: “A dearth of public health and biodefense expertise in the government, especially in the White House,” invites peril.
A well-informed accounting of the nation under siege.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-306605-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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