Book Review: “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

 When Regime Change came out last June, it received a lot of attention as an above average political book about current events. Particularly noteworthy was the apparent access of the authors to either transcripts or tapes of meetings in the White House’s Situation Room concerning current political issues, such as the Epstein files.

The book serves to remind readers of unpleasant episodes and developments of Trump’s second term as President (likely readers of this book will for the most part agree with this characterization). There are so numerous that many of us tend to forget quite a few of them as new outrages are piled on. Consequently, the book makes for discouraging reading. For me, it was not a page-turner, there being only so much of this I can take at a single sitting.

While the book adds a great deal of detail, the events and actions described will not be unfamiliar to most who make it through this book. Many of these details are interesting; some, such as the seating arrangements in the Situation Room, are not, but they are apparently there to confirm that the authors have impeccable source material. In addition, this type of detail may serve as a warning that participants in these meetings should think twice before trying to deny what the authors report.

On one particular point, I wish the authors had gone into more detail. One of the principal characters in this narrative besides the President is Stephen Miller, but little is said about his background and how he came to his right-wing and nativist views. He was brought up as a Reform Jew in southern California, and apparently was a contrarian in what one assumes was a mostly liberal community. While in high school, he met David Horowitz, who initially was a leftist journalist and editor of Ramparts magazine and then eventually migrated to the far right. Horowitz became a mentor to Miller and helped him to secure political positions in Washington, D.C. Miller worked for Representative Michele Bachman and Senator Jeff Sessions before finally working for Trump. From all signs, including the stories contained in this book, he has played a significant role in influencing or, at least, reinforcing many of Trump’s policy ideas. While it is understandable that this book, which is about Trump and is long enough, does not dwell on Miller’s background. However, I think Miller, who has managed to survive working for Trump, a feat in itself, and his relationship with Trump will prove to be a significant, though far from the only, aspect of any future analysis of this Administration.

The authors do not do much analyzing or interpreting of the significance of all the disturbing material they have assembled. The book’s main importance will likely not be its current readership or its impact on current politics. Those who read the book in its entirety are likely to be mainly those who follow current events closely and do not need to be persuaded to have a negative opinion of the Trump Administration. However, as source material for future writers, historians, and political analysts who will be trying to make sense of the current incredible period, this book will be invaluable.

Book Review: “City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco” by Jonathan Weber

 Jonathan Weber has written an interesting book on aspects of the political history of San Francisco from 1990 to 2024 with a focus on the technology industry. He has been involved as a technology reporter and editor for various publications during this period. 

While the rise of the technology industry has been centered to the south of San Francisco in what is now called “Silicon Valley,” the city has played a significant role. At first, it was essentially a bedroom community for tech workers who commuted to their companies down the peninsula. This gave rise to much reported unhappiness of some San Francisco residents with the luxury buses the tech companies hired to ease the commute of their workers. Subsequently, some tech companies came to the city or increased their presence there. Weber singles out Twitter, which was given a tax break to locate in an area near the San Francisco Civic Center (it has since vacated that property after it became “X”). 

San Francisco’s downtown suffered from Covid-19 and its aftermath, as tech workers enjoyed the convenience of working from anywhere. Notably, San Francisco’s downtown has been slower to recover from the pandemic than the business districts of other major U.S. cities. Now the AI boom has been giving an economic boost to the city, and I am told that downtown is in the process of recovering.

There is much more to the book than I have summarized here, and for those interested in the San Francisco tech story and its reverberations on the politics of the city, which are much more complicated than simply liberal politics, this book provides a lot of information, some of which is based on the author’s direct experiences.  However, if one is looking for an informed discussion of  the “soul of San Francisco,” this book may be a start but it is limited.

The limitation is made obvious by the map at the beginning of the book, which is only of a slice of the city in the northeast, including the downtown area. San Francisco is small in land area, but there is much more to the city than this.

Amazingly, the book, which at times digresses from the tech story, does not even cover some significant history of the downtown area. For example, there is no mention of Chevron, once a large employer in San Francisco, moving its headquarters from the city to San Ramon, which is about 40 miles away and inland from the southeast portion of the Bay. (Since then, Chevron moved its headquarters out of California entirely, to Houston in 2024.) Also, missing from the book is the move of Bechtel’s headquarters out of San Francisco to Reston, Virginia, in 2024. (Bechtel, a large, privately-held engineering firm once headed by George Shultz, also moved its operations in Houston to Reston.)

These companies’ departure from the city and their effective replacement by the tech industry is an important part of the story that is missing. In addition, while the largest employer in San Francisco, the city and county itself, is discussed, the next largest current employer, the University of California, San Francisco, is not. UCSF is a medical school and owner of several hospitals and affiliated medical services. It is only mentioned in passing for its expansion into the new Mission Bay development. Also, Dr. Bob Wachter, the head of UCSF’s Department of Medicine, who was a prominent user of Twitter and webcasts during the pandemic, is quoted about Covid. 

In discussing the business environment of San Francisco, the author also does not mention the significant financial industry. While NationsBank bought BankAmerica in 1998 and the headquarters of the combined company now called Bank of America went to Charlotte, North Carolina, there remains a significant financial industry presence in San Francisco along with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (where I briefly worked a long time ago).

The problem is that the author has lived and breathed tech, and ignored much of what else has been happening in San Francisco. The large Asian population (primarily Chinese), with concentrations in Chinatown, the large Sunset area which borders Golden Gate Park to the north and ends at the Pacific Ocean on the west, and also to an extent in the Richmond, which parallels the Sunset on the north of Golden Gate Park, is not much discussed. This group is important and has become an important political force. The diversity of the population, including Hispanics, and those with Russian, Italian, Irish, and other backgrounds, as well as the declining population of African-Americans, is absent from the book. Also not much discussed is the significant influence of the gay community on San Francisco politics and culture. The southern sections of the city, much of which are not the pretty version which figure in postcards, are also not mentioned. In other words, San Francisco, a relatively small city (the fourth largest in population in California) though effectively the center of the much larger Bay Area, is a complicated place with a diverse population and a colorful history. While the tech industry is important, you need to look beyond the tech industry and the book’s much discussed Burning Man festivals, to understand San Francisco, not to mention its soul.

Trouble at the Sierra Club

 A recent New York Times article detailed Sierra Club troubles at the national level. It focused on a controversy concerning whether the Club’s mission included social justice as well as environmental issues. The article quotes Michale Brune, a former Sierra Executive Director,  stating that “we can’t defend the environment by shutting ourselves up in a big, green box labeled ‘environmental issues.’”

The current controversy at the Sierra Club brings to mind that, in 2004, there was a fight on whether the Sierra Club should advocate limits on immigration to the U.S. The argument was that people living in the U.S. pollute more than people living elsewhere. The main advocate of this was Richard Lamm, a former Democratic governor of Colorado. He led a dissident slate in an election to the Sierra Club's board of directors. The slate lost. If it had won, I believe the Sierra Club would have splintered.

One difference between then and now is that the earlier effort to broaden the Sierra Club policy issues came from people who were not in charge of the Club. The leadership of the Club was then strongly against taking a position on immigration. The current broadening of the Sierra Club mission to issues falling under the rubric of Environmental Justice and Democracy is an initiative of the current leadership.

In response to the New York Times article, the current Executive Director, Loren Blackford, who replaced her controversial predecessor, Ben Jealous, who was fired “for cause,” posted a rebuttal on the Sierra Club’s website. It was not entirely persuasive.

Ms. Blackford rightly indicates, though, that much of the Sierra Club’s political impact is at the local level. Given the number of local chapters and groups that comprise the Sierra Club nationwide, it is hard to judge its overall effectiveness. However, recent developments in the San Francisco Bay Area indicate some portending trouble.

According to the Alameda Post, mountain bikers have gained seats on the San Francisco Bay Chapter’s Executive Committee and have remove long-time environmentalists from various Chapter committees. The immediate issue is whether trails on land administered by the East Bay Municipal Utility District should allow off-road biking. As indicated in the article, organized groups can take over a Sierra Club Chapter in usually low-turnout elections.

Also, the listings on the outings meetup site and activities calendar for the San Francisco Bay Chapter suggest that there is another controversy. Most of the hikes listed on the meetup site since sometime in February include the following notice: “**PLEASE NOTE: *This is not a Sierra Club-sponsored hike. *** This hike is listed as a convenience to members who might be interested. To join, you must sign the waiver at our meeting point.” Clicking on outings on the online calendar often leads to the following notice: “The activity you have chosen is not sponsored nor administered by the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has no information about the planning of these activities and makes no representations or warranties about the quality, safety, supervision or management of such activities. Click here to continue to activity details.”

Many of these hikes are listed by a long-time hike leader who is listed as the chair of the hiking section for the Chapter. The hikes he leads with the disclaimer are similar or identical to the ones he has led for years which were listed as Sierra club hikes. It is not clear what is going on here. There may be issues concerning liability raised by Sierra Club lawyers or an insurance company or there may be disagreements concerning what type of outings the Chapter should sponsor. Currently, I would note, there is no such disclaimer for hikes listed by the Sierra Club hiking group in the Washington, DC area.

As a long-time member of the Sierra Club, I have generally supported the club’s environmental goals and have participated on both coasts in many hiking outings (and a long time ago, served as a hike leader for the Sierra Club hiking group for the Washington, DC area). I have not, though, agreed with every policy position the Sierra Club has advocated but thought it important to support the Club as a counterweight to powerful interests on the other side of environmental issues.

Moreover, with respect to local hikes, I have noticed that the Sierra Club hiking groups for the Washington, DC area and the San Francisco Bay Area have not fully recovered from the pause in activity due to the pandemic. There continues to be a reluctance to organize carpools to hiking locations, which is somewhat peculiar for an environmental group, and there is a reduced list of activities, particularly noticeable in the San Francisco Bay Area because of the number of hikes it used to list for each weekend.

The reduction in hiking activities also impacts Sierra Club membership. For example, when James Watt was Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan Administration, he unwittingly was a great recruiter for the Sierra Club. One hike leader at the time for the DC area, Water Wells, decided to lead monthly Sunday afternoon hikes in Rock Creek Park. These hikes did not entail long drives nor getting up early and were not physically very challenging. Part of Walter’s goal, as I recall, was to get new members involved in the Sierra Club so that they would not let their membership lapse in the coming years.

I want the Sierra Club to be successful now, especially with the current Administration’s assault on the environment. There does not appear to be the surge in membership that happened during the Reagan Administration. Fortunately, there are other organizations that are fighting for the environment, but the Sierra Club most likely is losing effectiveness because of its internal problems. I hope that the current leadership of the Sierra Club can admit that there are internal problems that need to be addressed.

Book Review: “When It Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World” by Jordan Thomas

Jordan Thomas is an anthropologist who spent some time while in graduate school in Santa Barbara as a firefighter in an elite National Forest Service unit, Los Padres Hotshots. This book recounts his experiences as a firefighter and delves into California history in order to provide historical context.

Essentially, this book has two storylines. The first is about firefighting. The accounts of combating various forest fires are vivid, as are the descriptions of the various members of his firefighting group. It is a well-written and engrossing adventure story, and it also makes the case that the firefighters are way underpaid given the hardships, the hours, and the dangers involved.

The other storyline is how civilization has messed up when it comes to fire. There is an underlying anger. Thomas argues that indigenous people in California were ingenious in how they managed their environment with controlled burns, and that this was lost when California was settled by people of European origin. He does not shy away from using the term genocide and is harsh in his judgement of the Spanish priest and missionary Junipero Serra and his treatment of the indigenous population in California. (Junipero Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1988 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2015 during his visit that year to the United States. These actions were controversial, especially in California).

In contrast to the way the indigenous populations had dealt with fire, the policy of the National Forest Service was to actively suppress all fires and not use controlled burns. While this policy has been changing with some difficulty in recent years, the buildup of the fuel for forest fires resulted in disasters. Thomas is no doubt right about this, but I was surprised that he did not mention the role of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s power lines in setting off fires. (PG&E ended up filing under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code due to its liability in connection with its power lines and fires.) 

Finally, there is climate change that has extended the fire season. This is more evidence of the damage we have done to the environment, with one of its manifestations more large and dangerous wild fires. Thomas is not against fighting fires, especially where it gets close to places people live, but his book is a plea for more intelligent environmental policies to mitigate the dangers from fires and other environmental issues.

Book Review: “No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson” by Gardiner Harris

Johnson & Johnson has had a good corporate reputation. In particular, the company has been much praised for its handling of the cyanide poisoning of Tylenol capsules in 1982, which has been used for a Harvard Business School case study. Gardiner Harris, a former pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, argues convincingly in his new book, No More Tears: The Dark History of Johnson & Johnson, that this reputation is undeserved. He offers detailed reporting about various J&J products, including Tylenol, baby powder, Risperdal, metal hip implants, and others. 

It makes for very disturbing reading. For example, J&J tried to minimize the asbestos issue with talc in its baby powder, which eventually has been replaced with cornstarch. The chapter on Risperdal is especially disturbing. This antipsychotic drug with J&J’s encouragement, has been used in assisted care facilities to calm down those living there, an off-label use for which there is convincing evidence can hasten death. This drug has also been prescribed for children with problem behavior. However, this drug can cause disturbing weight gain, and some boys can develop breasts from taking the drug, for which they need to have surgery to remove. 

As for the opiod crisis, while Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers have taken the lionshare of the blame, Harris points out that J&J was selling Duragesic, whose active ingredient is fentanyl, using the same arguments and marketing strategies as Purdue used to sell OxyContin. While fentanyl does not come from poppies, the active ingredient in OxyContin does, and J&J supplied the raw material for OxyContin and other opiod drugs to Purdue and others from a Tasmanian company it bought in 1982. After that purchase, J&J became the largest supplier of active ingredients from opium poppies in the United States to other drug manufacturers.

Harris also shows the effective marketing strategies J&J used to promote questionable uses of its products, including the charming pharmaceutical representatives who visit doctors, the rewards to doctors who write a large number of prescriptions for particular drugs, and the use of ghostwritten studies of particular products. Also, Harris argues that J&J had undue influence with the FDA, both because it could influence FDA appropriation decisions with Congress and could offer jobs to FDA employees when they decided to leave the agency.

To be fair to the FDA, Harris does provide instances when the FDA was trying to do the right thing even as it faced opposition from J&J. As for the pharmaceutical representatives, Harris says that some courageously blew the whistle on their employer and showed greater integrity than the people running J&J.

Unlike Patrick Radden Keefe’s book on the Sacklers and Purdue, Empire of Pain, Harris’s book does not provide the compelling, focused novelistic narrative as Keefe’s book. However, Harris’s book is decently written and is more disturbing from a public policy perspective. Purdue Pharma could be brought down, but that will not happen to J&J, which provides useful and beneficial medical pharmaceuticals and products. One suspects that J&J is not alone in using questionable tactics to sell its products, though they may be particularly good at public relations and lobbying.

Harris’s book has not reached the bestselling heights of Keefe’s book. That is too bad. It deserves greater attention.

Book Review: “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Careless People is the new bestseller that recounts the experiences of the author working for Facebook in a senior position from 2011 to 2017. Her depiction of work life at Facebook is not pretty, and, in particular, the portrayal of the behavior of three top Facebook executives, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan, is harsh.

Facebook tried to suppress the book and succeeded in baring Wynn-Williams from promoting the book because of a non-disclosure agreement or agreements she signed. This, of course, increased interest in the book and it reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list. No author promotion was necessary.

Those who buy the book and read it will not be disappointed. It is well-written, interesting,  and a page-turner. 

The book, though, does lead to questions, and one can only hope that Wynn-Williams will be able to talk about it and answer questions outside of a Congressional hearing at which she recently appeared.

For example, why did she stay in this toxic workplace for seven years, and only left when she was fired? Her explanation at the end of the book is that she needed to find another job with health insurance (she details a serious medical issue in the book.) However, she does not say what she did after she was fired to get health insurance or employment.

Her husband, who goes by the name “Tom” in the book, is, according to The Times (London), Tom Braithwaite, an editor at the Financial Times. It seems that the FT would have provided or offered some health insurance to him and Wynn-Williams, when they were both based in the United States and did not have access to the UK’s National Health Service. Wynn-Williams and her husband now live in London and presumably no longer have to worry about medical expenses.

Another reason the author gives for not leaving Facebook has to do with a citizenship and visa issue (pp. 222-224). Wynn-Williams is from New Zealand. For “complicated reasons” never explained, she says that she needed to obtain U.S. citizenship. However, she does explain that her application for U.S. citizenship is denied because, when she applies, her residency in California falls short of the 90 days required by 17 days. In addition, her husband’s visa at the time was due to expire in five months, which is not enough time normally to finish the citizenship process. She says that she is relying on Facebook lawyers to expedite her citizenship and of course she will have to stay an employee for them to do this. However, we never learn what happened subsequently and are left in the dark about whether she ever obtained U.S. citizenship.   

More importantly, the book has a primary focus on Facebook’s influence on politics in the U.S. and abroad. When it comes to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, she attributes Trump’s surprise victory due to help from Facebook, for which the Trump campaign apparently financed. She says that Facebook made the same offer to the Clinton campaign but was rebuffed. Surprisingly, she does not mention the activities of Cambridge Analytica.

There is not, though, any analysis about why she thinks Facebook was the decisive factor in the U.S. 2016 election or in other countries. Facebook, while huge, is not the only place where voters get their information. She ignores the importance of Twitter for journalists and others, and, in the U.S., she does not mention the influence of right-wing talk radio and Fox News, not to mention more conventional news sources. It would be difficult to isolate the impact of Facebook on elections here and abroad, but she may be too focused on Facebook because that was her employer.

Nevertheless, her accounts of Facebook and foreign politics, such as those of Myanmar and ultimately a failed deal with China, are interesting, and will probably be useful for further investigations by journalists or government entities. 

Regarding the anecdotes of bad behavior, some of those who were there have said or will likely say that their memories or perceptions of certain incidents are different. It is impossible for outsiders to know, but, while some details may be challenged at some point, her writing is fairly convincing.  

Finally, one is left with the question why she chose to publish this book now, more than seven years after she was fired. Part of the reason looks like revenge, but there is probably more to it than that. There must be a backstory to this. While the author recounts lots of details, she is vague about other things, including exactly what she does now in London. Nevertheless, if one is at all interested in the subject, including the strange people who are in charge of the large technology companies, I recommend this book. While you may not agree with the author on everything and may even have doubts about some of what she says, the book is both informative and engrossing. 

Book Review: Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot

Max Boot’s new book, Reagan: His Life and Legend, is now the definitive biography of Ronald Reagan. The author, who once characterized himself as a Reagan Republican, did a prodigious amount of research over 10 years, which ultimately impelled him to a more balanced view of our 40^th U.S. President.

The book is most interesting in the chapters of his pre-presidential life. In these sections, spanning his childhood, his Hollywood career, his leadership of the Screen Actors Guild, and his governorship of California, there is much that was new to me and some that reminded me of certain episodes. It is interesting and provides some understanding of a man, who, for all his charming demeanor, remains somewhat of a mystery, even to his children.

One aspect of Reagan’s career in the 1960s that the book does not discuss in more than a glancing fashion is his association with J. Edgar Hoover. This is a sordid tale of a mutually beneficial relationship and is detailed in a 2012 book by Seth Rosenfeld, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. Boot is aware of this book by a former investigative reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle and lists the book in his bibliography, but does not appear to have used it very much. It is part of the Reagan story.

As for Reagan as President, Boot is particularly critical of the invasion of Grenada, the Iran-Contra affair, and the response to the AIDS crisis. Moreover, Boot depicts Reagan as a bad manager; he did not pay much attention to what “the fellas” were doing. In some cases, they performed very well (for example, James Baker); at other times, it was disastrous.

Boot argues that the worst personnel move Reagan made was allowing James Baker, then Chief of Staff, to swap jobs with Don Regan, then Treasury Secretary. This was bad for the White House and Boot thinks that Nancy Reagan did the right thing by forcing Don Regan out (though the way she did it can be criticized). What Boot does not mention since this is a book about Ronald Reagan, was that the job swap was good for the Treasury Department, as I can attest from personal experience. Don Regan as Treasury Secretary made sensible policy decisions, but he created and encouraged open bureaucratic warfare among sections of Treasury. (I was involved in some bitter disagreement between Domestic Finance, where I worked, and the International division of Treasury, then known as “OASIA,” about various debt management issues. This also involved Tax Policy and the Economic Policy sections of Treasury. An organization cannot sustain that level of animosity for very long. The hostility abruptly ended when Baker became Secretary.)

Surprisingly, Boot mentions but hardly discusses a major bipartisan legislative accomplishment of the Reagan Administration, the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Whole books have been written about this; given its importance, Boot might have devoted more than a paragraph to this.

As for the ending of the Cold War, Boot takes a contrarian position that its end was due to Reagan. He thinks most of the credit should go to Mikhail Gorbachev and argues that Reagan’s insistence on the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) and the military buildup may have increased domestic pressure on Gorbachev to divert from his chosen path. Boot makes a strong case, and does credit Reagan for having a productive relationship with Gorbachev and putting pragmatism above his ideology.

Reagan was a significant President, and he successfully moved U.S. politics to the right. In many of his decisions he was pragmatic rather than ideological. For example, he recognized that his first major tax legislation went too far and effectively raised taxes in the following years. He also can be given credit for not interfering with Paul Volcker in the punishing and successful Federal Reserve efforts to conquer inflation.

This book is a necessary corrective to the sunny recollections many have of the Reagan years. As President, Reagan had a mixed record and at the end of his Presidency he was hardly the “great communicator.” He also appealed to racism in his campaigns but with much more subtlety than the openly racist Donald Trump. Boot comments at the end of the book:

“...by 2016, Reagan’s party had left his seemingly genteel brand of politics for the harder-edged populism of Donald J. Trump. Many analysts wonder if Trump represented a repudiation of Reagan’s legacy or a continuation of it. The truth, as with question of Reagan’s intelligence, was complicated.”

 Boot notes both policy and demeanor differences between Reagan and Trump, and clearly is much more of an admirer of Reagan than Trump, whom he probably despises. However, Boot concludes, perhaps reluctantly:

 

“...If Reagan had been alive in 2016, he undoubtedly would have been derided as RINO (Republican in name only) like the two Bushes, John McCain, and Mitt Romney; indeed, conservatives had frequently expressed their frustration with Reagan even during his presidency. Yet Reagan had helped set the GOP–and the country–on the path that ultimately led it to embrace divisive figures such as Donald Trump. Reagan’s legacy included, after all, not only empowering the Christian Right and a growing white backlash against minority empowerment but also economic policies that helped hollow out the middle class, thereby creating the conditions for Trump’s populist movement. (Of course, once in office, Trump’s policies favored the well-off as much as Reagan’s had.)”

Memories of Ronald Reagan’s presidency are fading and the current Republican Party is significantly different from the one that Reagan headed, even if he was viewed then as on the right. His presidency was consequential and important, and, even though this book has some omissions I have noted and a great amount of detail about other aspects of his life and political career, I recommend it for anyone interested in Reagan’s life or the period of American history were he loomed large. The book is both a detailed history of Reagan’s life and career and a balanced assessment of the man.