PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)Keefe offers a forensic account of the Sackler family’s direct involvement ... Keefe is particularly damning of the current generation of Sacklers—his portrait of fashionista Joss Sackler who Instagrams her life and fashion brand while dismissing the source of her husband’s wealth as an irrelevancy is deliciously arch. But while the book is a damning portrait of the Sacklers, Empire of Pain also raises questions about the other bad actors that helped stoke America’s opioid crisis.
Barack Obama
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)Though Obama’s successor is not mentioned until the final chapters of this voluminous work, he is a ghostly presence throughout. Dipping in to the world of another president, just a decade ago, the contrast with the presidency of Trump is inescapable. While we must wait to see what illuminations Trump shares with us if and when he writes his own memoirs, Obama’s new work is an absorbing account of the events that brought him to the White House and the first 2½ years of his presidency ... Thoughtful, measured, deliberate, with flashes of eloquent brilliance, this 700-plus-page tome exhibits the characteristics of the man who made history as the first African-American president ... The bulk of the book focuses on Obama’s years in the White House. In rich detail he sets out the different policy and legislative challenges he tackled, and the painful process of getting these through Congress ... If there is a theme in this book, it is the political realities and trade-offs that have to be made in the process of governing. Obama is intensely aware of his own political and personal journey from youthful idealism to realpolitik ... Running through the book is Obama’s awareness of the weight of history and expectation on his shoulders ... It is such sublime moments that make A Promised Land more than an average political memoir. The juxtaposition of the macro and the micro, the here and now versus the arc of history, is a recurring theme that will sometimes bring a tear to the eye.
Evan Osnos
PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)The book is strongest on Biden’s relationship with Obama, where the author draws on interviews he conducted with both men when they were in the White House ... As Osnos moves to Biden’s most recent political chapter, his analysis of how a Biden presidency might work is fascinating ... While the book is a timely and stylish work at a key juncture in US history, the speed at which it was published sometimes shows. It is short – arguably too short at 170 pages – and includes some errors ... Nonetheless, Osnos’s fluid style, access to Biden, and insightful analysis makes it a worthwhile and eminently readable portrait of a man who may become the 46th president of the United States.
David Frum
PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)[Frum] doesn’t hold back...a damning denouncement of the Trump presidency, the broken promises he made to the electorate and the damage his term in office has done to Republicanism in the United States ... Frum’s punchy, in-your-face style isn’t for everyone. His pages are packed with aphorisms and off-the-cuff judgments ... This is definitely a man who could go head-to-head with Donald Trump in a tv studio debate – and win ... offers a welcome recap of some of the most egregious actions of the Trump years ... Frum is particularly strong on the psychology of the president ... He also comes close to explaining the question that has most confounded Trump’s critics: why his core support base has stuck with him ... notably absent is any meaningful discussion of how senior members of the Republican Party have rowed in behind Trump. Though he cleverly analyses how Trump tapped in to the increasing anxiety of a party aware of its minority status as America’s demographics change, he is silent on the complicity of senior party figures in Congress like Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell who have enabled Trump ... Arguably the strongest passages of Trumpocalypse are where Frum strays from his evisceration of Trump and turns his analytical skills to the broader problems in the US and the overall political landscape. His overview of America’s healthcare problems is concise and on the money ... Those of a liberal persuasion attracted by Frum’s denunciation of Donald Trump in Trumpocalypse, may be disappointed.
Samantha Power
PositiveThe Irish Times... a uniquely personal and absorbing account of [Power\'s] time at the heart of US foreign policy ... Power’s book gives a riveting fly-on-the wall insight into the Obama administration’s foreign-policy decisionmaking and the inner workings of the United Nations. From the mundanities of the federal-bureaucracy machine to the sometimes unpalatable compromises and choices that grease the UN machine, Power’s book chronicles an important moment in world affairs ... an honest, probing account of the challenges facing policymakers and a timely reflection on the limits and responsibilities of the United States’ role in the world. Ultimately, Power’s youthful idealism survives despite the challenges and frustrations of political power.
Francisco Cantú
PositiveThe Irish Times\"Part memoir, part history, this book evokes the barren expanse of the desert in all its grandeur and hostility. At times it as if we have entered a Hades-like lunar topography, as the border becomes a disputed territory between heaven and hell, conscious and unconscious, sanity and madness ... At a time of acute debate about immigration policy in the United States and Donald Trump’s promise to build a border wall with Mexico, The Line Becomes a River is a timely contribution to the immigration debate ... Ultimately, however, The Line Becomes A River shows the limits of the individual in the face of a labyrinthine political and bureaucratic system. As Cantu strives to connect with some of the migrants trapped in the immigration machine, the futility of his actions is laid bare.\
