The former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations offers a firsthand perspective on major national and international matters, as well as a behind-the-scenes account of her tenure in the Trump administration.
Her repeated pledges of allegiance may surprise readers who thought Haley had left the administration halfway through her term as some sort of protest ... Perhaps the most moving part of her memoir deals with the tragedy that occasioned the flag's removal, the 2015 massacre of nine parishioners inside a historic black church in Charleston. The Charleston chapters are the most passionate in the book. But then the author is caught up in the Republican nomination wars of 2016 ... Haley responds with high dudgeon when other countries' ambassadors denigrate the U.S. ... With varying degrees of subtlety, Haley implies that her loyalty is less to Trump the man than to the voters who made him president ... In the end, memoir becomes manifesto. Haley accepts and praises Trump without fully embracing him. But she is absolutely unequivocal in proclaiming her bond with his voters and her bona fides on the issues she knows matter to them.
Former South Carolina governor Haley...delivers a selective and self-serving account of her stewardship of her home state in the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston church shooting and her tenure as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Haley movingly describes trying to call Mother Emanuel AME’s pastor, State Senator Clementa Pickney, before she realized he was one of the shooter’s nine victims ... Haley’s unwillingness to fully address the counterarguments to her policy positions undermines her authority, and her claims to have left the UN before the 2018 midterms simply because she needed 'to take a breath' will ring false to readers keeping track of how often she describes herself as 'ambitious' and 'no wallflower.' As groundwork for a future campaign, however, this carefully worded memoir does its job.
... the most remarkable part of this memoir, in contrast to the onslaught of Trump exposés, is her account of how well she worked with the president, how they established a relationship based on mutual respect and trust, how she was able to disagree with him without drawing his ire, and how she was able to leave her U.N. post on good terms ... An average political memoir containing strong speculation that her next action will be a bid for the White House.
