A tremendous study of how Putin has tragically manipulated national myths for personal gain and revanchist patriotism.
An eloquent report probes the complicated, competing narratives of Ukraine–Russia history.
Martin Sixsmith is a former BBC Moscow correspondent and author of An Unquiet Heart, and his son, Daniel, is a historian and author of The War of Nerves. Despite the optimism in the West for the emergence of liberal democracy in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of Putin over the last two decades has assured the resurgence of the militarized autocratic model first installed during the time of the Mongols in the 14th century. As a correspondent in Moscow in 1991, Martin joined the triumphal voices at Russia’s disintegration and reported—wrongly, he admits—that “Russia would re-enter the community of nations after seven decades of self-imposed exile and become a responsible member of the international order.” Instead, Putin has only grown more resentful about what the former Soviet Union has lost. Most recently, Putin has reembraced the “Great Russian nationalism” favored by Catherine the Great, and he stresses the concept of Russian vulnerability to Western aggression and the need to protect the allegedly persecuted Russian minorities in places such as the Donbas—hence the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As the authors note, Hitler used a similar casus belli to invade the Sudetenland in 1938. “Like Stalin before him,” the authors write, “Putin has appointed himself the supreme arbiter of the meaning of history. He declares his strict adherence to historical facts, but they are the ‘facts’ according to the ever-growing number…of Government Organized Non-Governmental Organizations that he himself has created.” As the authors capably demonstrate in this stimulating text, Putin’s massive folly in invading Ukraine—and expecting a warm welcome—has opened a perilous new chapter in the Russian historical narrative.
A tremendous study of how Putin has tragically manipulated national myths for personal gain and revanchist patriotism.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781399409865
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
A mostly compelling account of one woman’s struggles within Trumpworld.
An insider’s account of the rampant misconduct within the Trump administration, including the tumult surrounding the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
Hutchinson, who served as an assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, gained national prominence when she testified to the House Select Committee, providing possibly the most damaging portrait of Trump’s erratic behavior to date. In her hotly anticipated memoir, the author traces the challenges and triumphs of her upbringing in New Jersey and the work (including a stint as an intern with Sen. Ted Cruz) that led her to coveted White House internships and eventual positions in the Office of Legislative Affairs and with Meadows. While the book offers few big reveals beyond her testimony (many details leaked before publication), her behind-the-scenes account of the chaotic Trump administration is intermittently insightful. Her initial portrait of Trump is less critical than those written by other former staffers, as the author gauges how his actions were seemingly stirred more by vanity and fear of appearing weak, rather than pure malevolency. For example, she recalls how he attended an event without a mask because he didn’t want to smear his face bronzer. Hutchinson also provides fairly nuanced portraits of Meadows and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who, along with Trump, eventually turned against her. She shares far more negative assessments about others in Trump’s orbit, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and adviser Rudy Giuliani, recounting how Giuliani groped her backstage during Trump’s Jan. 6 speech. The narrative lags after the author leaves the White House, but the story intensifies as she’s faced with subpoenas to testify and is forced to undergo deep soul-searching before choosing to sever ties with Trump and provide the incriminating information that could help take him down.
A mostly compelling account of one woman’s struggles within Trumpworld.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781668028285
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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