The Squad is a layman accessible monograph on the younger Democratic party in the USA considered by political analyst and journalist Ryan Grim. Released 5th Dec 2023 by Henry Holt, it's 336 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.
Politics and legal analysis can be very dry, and, frankly, boring difficult to read and assimilate. The author is an experienced astute analyst who manages to distill the unwieldy and chaotic realities of the political disharmony in the USA into salient and comprehensive bites.
The book contains a play-by-play recounting of the history of AOC and to a lesser degree, the other members of the Squad since 2016. There is quite a lot of commentary about -how- and -why- things became gridlocked, but it's also blended into the narrative. This is a book to read from cover to cover, and not arranged such that particular material will be easy to find (except for the search text function on the ebook format).
Inevitably, the overall takeaway is that a two-party system is untenable and that it hasn't worked well at all post-Reagan. There don't seem to be a lot of options other than one side trying to score political points against the other and to lie, cheat, and blur the boundaries to prevent the other side from making progress (which will be turned into political credit). The author does a good job of pointing out places where the titular subjects of the book actually seem to stand for something and are earnestly seeking lasting positive change for their constituents, and the USA as a whole.
4 stars. Dystopian, and even more so because it's factually true. We can hope the forces of objective truth, honor, and dignity win. The book is not annotated and there are no chapter notes.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
No comments:
Post a Comment