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David Rothkopf is the internationally acclaimed author of Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making (FSG, 2008) and Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power. He is the president and chief executive of Garten mostra altro Rothkopf, an international advisory firm, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. mostra meno
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American Resistance by David Rothkopf is an insightful and spot on account of the ways in which many of the career public servants helped save (for now) democracy from the authoritarian attempts to undermine it by Trump and his flunkies.

You'll see the people who either support Trump (like liquidbrains) or are sympathetic to the ideals he encourages (usually with cries of being too biased) do what they can to give the book less credit than it deserves. Well, one-star ratings with no review (because liquidbrains can't read well enough to grasp the book) only speaks to the person's idiocy, so ignore the moron. The ones who complain about not being unbiased, well, when someone who supports their country's democracy is writing about someone who is doing everything possible to destroy it, I don't think I will call their unwillingness to pull punches being biased, but rather very frank in their portrayal of the orange menace.

My biggest issue with the book isn't one of content but of sourcing. Much of what he talks about is either from personal interviews (which he usually mentions in the text) or has been widely circulated elsewhere. Even though we know about, for instance, Trump's exaggeration of his time at military school and that it has been verified, it would have been nice to have more notes showing sources. It isn't that I doubt very much in the book, but those who want to defend the anti-democracy leanings of the former moron-in-chief will use the lack of source acknowledgements as ammunition to pretend to find fault with the book. Unless the notes are only missing from the ARC I read, this is a negative. If the final copy has notes, well, "never mind."

Like many Americans I often make fun of civil servants at the same time that I acknowledge they are the ones keeping the country on a relatively even keel. This volume shows just how important these people are. It isn't about whether many of them lean left or right, they all support the idea of a government that tries to function well and for the benefit of all. They perform their duties as required even if they don't agree completely with the policies. But when the attempts at creating new policies circumvent established norms and are designed to destroy the government, they find every conceivable legal path to avoid implementing them. And we need to thank them.

I would recommend this to those who know how lucky we as a nation, as well as the world at large, were to dodge the bullet that was the tRump administration. This shows some of the ways honorable people resisted. Did they have personal reasons as well as public good? Of course! We all have multiple reasons for what we do. It is horribly disingenuous to pretend that having those other reasons as well as doing good somehow minimizes the good that was done.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
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pomo58 | Sep 12, 2022 |
first quote to end, fabulous

I loved the first quote which was so powerful. I am am-old woman and feel the same way. It is so important to have this record. We should not forget any of these facts.
 
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WiseOwlFactory | 1 altra recensione | Feb 20, 2022 |
I have read several books about the state of our politics since the election of the 45th president and the tragedy into which this plunged this nation. This book is, by far, the best among them because it places the horror of the last five years in historical context. The use of language is magnificent. The sentiment is positive. Highly recommended.
 
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jmulick | 1 altra recensione | Nov 7, 2020 |
Have you guys ever watched a TED Talk? Well, apparently some of those Ted Talks are turned into published works so that the ideas can be delved into a little deeper. (To see more you can visit their website here. (They haven't asked me to review today's book by the way.)) I hadn't watched David Rothkopf's talk but The Great Questions of Tomorrow was featured in my regular 'what's new at Simon & Schuster' email and it seemed to be calling my name. Rothkopf is exploring a very wide and diverse range of topics with a central theme of 'what does this mean for the future?' running through them all. I guess it should come as no surprise that this book thoroughly freaked me out while at the same time fascinating me. Have you thought about the future of drone warfare and whether or not it might constitute the necessity for intelligent machines to have rights as members of society? WELL, NOW YOU ARE. He jumped from frightening scenarios like that to ones that hadn't even occurred to me such as complete mobile banking which would see the demise of physical currency and brick and mortar banks. O_O I especially enjoyed his take on government and how we should be trying to elect leaders who not only understand technology but can look towards the future to prepare accordingly. His example of how this was not done was that just because there was one shoe bomber it shouldn't mean we have to remove our shoes at airports into perpetuity. All in all, it was a fascinating read that I zipped right through. It's great for the people in your life (or yourself!) that enjoy philosophical discussions about the future and how actions of today and yesterday have and should continue to have direct bearing on how we handle events in the future. 10/10… (altro)
 
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AliceaP | Dec 20, 2017 |

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Statistiche

Opere
9
Utenti
628
Popolarità
#40,132
Voto
½ 3.7
Recensioni
14
ISBN
54
Lingue
9

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