A sharp-edged work of legal journalism that will fascinate politics junkies.
Legal commentator Toobin examines the power of presidents to pardon others—and perhaps themselves.
“There is…no check or balance on the president’s power to pardon. It is the provision of the Constitution most directly descended from the authority of kings of England,” writes Toobin. His exemplar throughout is Richard Nixon, who might have pardoned those whose work led to his downfall but instead sought precedent that would allow him to pardon himself. Some of his advisers, especially Al Haig, argued that whatever the Constitution does not specifically prohibit is permitted, while a legal opinion from the Justice Department likened self-pardon to a judge conducting his own trial. Nixon negotiated a pardon from Gerald Ford, who had earlier promised the public that he would not grant one; what swayed Ford were documents that Nixon had squirreled away, much as Donald Trump did at the end of his first term. “Seen in this way,” writes Toobin, “Nixon used his papers as a form of extortion—and it worked.” Trump, too, has studied self-pardon, tweeting with characteristic bombast, “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” Ford took a shellacking for pardoning Nixon, although Toobin persuasively argues that the pardon wasn’t the make-or-break reason for his defeat in the 1976 election that it has been made out to be. Interestingly, too, Toobin observes that had Nixon looked beyond his close circle of advisers, he would have discovered that the Justice Department “had no intention of prosecuting Nixon,” just as, it seems, the department is walking away from Trump.
A sharp-edged work of legal journalism that will fascinate politics junkies.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781668084946
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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