interesting if overlong book, the main worth of which is probably as a historical document attesting to some of the myriad failings of the Trump administration and how clearly it was angling to become the Trump régime.
There was a lot for me to empathise with in the early parts of There Is Nothing for You Here, in which Fiona Hill recounts her childhood in a workingclass family in an impoverished part of northeastern England, and how a combination of hard work, timing, and some lucky breaks got her the educational opportunities she needed to make a different life for herselfwhile shes roughly a generation older than me, there are similarities in our life stories.
Hill writes in a lucid and straightforward manneralthough she clearly has more experience writing policy documents than compelling proseand I respect her decision to eschew scandalmongering or catastrophising, even while shes clear about just how bad the political, social, economic and environmental effects of worsening inequality will be.
However, while Hill is upfront about the role that race, class, and gender play in shaping and limiting peoples opportunities, her proposals for how these seem to lie very much in the “benevolent capitalism” mode.
She is a Brookings Institution fellow for a reason, I suppose, I about choked when, right near the end of the book, Hill not only gave credit to the Trump administration for what were clearly holdover economic effects from the Obama administration, but also spoke with approval of J.
D. Vancea man about whom the most charitable thing I can say is “thundering gobshite, ”
Theres little here thats new, either in terms of proposals for change or information about either the Trump administration, the U, K. or Putins Russia, unless youre really new to any works on them, Readable, but not essential. Excellent memoir Fiona Hill tells her story of growing up very poor in the northeast of England with selfdeprecating humor, intelligence and honesty, I enjoyed it very much, and am even more impressed by her intelligence, determination, and desire to serve her adopted country, We are lucky to have her,
She uses her own life story, and the experiences of her coal miner father and grandfather, and NHS nurse mother, to illustrate the importance of education and opportunity to succeed and move ahead in life especially if one is born in one of the “forgotten areas” of the UK or the US, as she learned as a Harvard graduate student, and later, after marrying an American from a rural Midwestern family.
Hill also clearly illustrates the despair UK, US and USSR residents experienced from the topdown economic transformations put in place by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, then Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and eventually Putin, once the USSR fell apart.
These people werent consulted or even warned about what was going to happen, and there was no plan to help them adjust to the deprivations and closures to come.
Hill spent time studying in Moscow, so is able to compare life there at the very end of the Soviet Union, to the rise of the oligarchs under Putin in thes.
She is an acknowledged expert on Putin, and by extension, the dangers of populist rulers, As she points out, they are often big on catchy slogans, surface appearance of progress or success, but light on policy, or indepth planning, The populist will tell you they feel your pain, and they alone can fix problems, but they are all about themselves and their cronies who prop them up.
I especially related to
her memories of the mids when she and I, were going to college, I was so caught in my own life and concerns about getting into and affording college, that I forgot a lot of what was happening in the world.
This book was like a personal time capsule for me, as a kid from a bluecolor Midwestern background who was the first of my family to graduate college, I could relate to all of the Cold War concerns, the economic fears how would I pay for college Could I afford to stay long enough to graduate Like Hill, through parttime jobs and summer jobs, I managed but as she points out, tuition has become so expensive, students are expected to build such a resume just to get into college, and then network and build connections and mentors to help find a professional job, the dream of an education is becoming an impossible dream for any but the wealthiest.
And forget it if a graduate wants to return to the “forgotten place” they came from, if there are no professional opportunities there even though family, friends, a sense of belonging might draw them back they have to go where the jobs are, just perpetuating the despair of forgotten people and places.
Hill doesnt shy away from the role of race, class, income inequality, or gender discrimination in preventing underprivileged citizens from accessing opportunity, She acknowledges other books have pointed out the importance of education in making opportunity in thest century, but they havent provided any solutions, Hill puts on her policymaking hat and offers several ideas in the Afterword of actions citizens can take, pointing out,
“While federal, state, and local governments, large foundations, and wealthy individual philanthropists play critical roles in creating opportunities for underprivileged Americans, each of us as an individual actor can help create what I describe in this book as the infrastructure of opportunity.She then goes on to list individually what a CEO, or retiree, or teacher, or college student can do,
”
I appreciated the intelligence and care Hill put into this memoir Ive only touched on the range that she covers, It was very refreshing, after all the tellall books revealing the chaos of the last administration, I havent had the heart to read those books, first, because most of the most outrageous tidbits were leaked in promotional interviews, second, because I feel if the authors were on the spot and truly alarmed by what they saw, why wait until the damage was done to reveal their damning evidence in a book
This book didnt feel at all like that she addresses her time in the White House, and the subsequent first impeachment hearing, but without sensational revelations or selfserving.
She is more concerned with using her experience to spotlight the importance of education and opportunity for all citizens, Very well done, thoughtprovoking, and highly recommended, Delusional af believing that some random prick billionaire cares about workers :D If this bunch of idiots had any brains, they should have understood that billionaires are billionaires because they get a surplus value of work and subsequently capital from everyone else.
believing they suddenly start to care about your idiotic problems is purely delusional, especially talking about Trump, It's dangerous to revisit your heroes, and Fiona's a hero, I don't want to ever get over how she buried an unsuspecting Steve Castor at Trump's impeachment inquiry, He came after her and when she started off with an admission of getting emotional, he fed her rope as fast as she could suck it up, nodding along and never suspecting his opponent might be much smarter than he, and able to use that rope to truss up his argument like a thanksgiving turkey.
Which she did. It was the verbal equivalent of getting hit in the face by Serena Williams' backhand,
After that, her poor book didn't have a chance to stand up to the legend, It's like making the kids watch Aliens neither they nor you will recreate the stark power of the original experience, Still this was worth it for a few reasons, First, you get a flyonthewall's view of the stupid, grafty thoughtless inner workings of the White House under Trump, Yes, it's as bad as you thought,
Second, Hill does a creditable job explaining how the chips really are stacked up in your favor, if you're an advantaged white male, and otherwise, not.
She starts by eviscerating the class society of Great Britain in unemotional factual anecdtes, many of which happened to her, It's fundamentally credible and one gets an appropriately disappointed view of our allies, If you know me, you know I think America gets poor marks on avoiding selfperpetuating privilege, So it was really something to see that the famously classstratified British society really deserves the gold medal in that event, Then she shows how it's the same in Russia, and the US too!, . . with fundamentally no differences except more race and less inheritance in the equation, as the discriminating factor, One powerful chapter ended by reminding us that creating the apparatus of opportunity is everyone's job, a cumulative result of some structural biases, yes, but also the product of a thousand little individual efforts.
This frankly pushed me to be more aggressive in my own hiring, knowing the people I'm evaluating have swimming upstream their whole lives,
Last, I got the audio book, because I liked her accent, and wanted to hear the thoughts from the author, This worked out well, entertained me on a month of commuting, but I did find the book slow, It's hard for me to pay attention when I'm consuming at a listening pace and I'm sure that were I reading, it would have had more impact.
Fiona Hill is one of the top US Russian foreign relations experts, Her testimony in the first Trump impeachment hearings was nothing short of riveting, She is so articulate, knowledgeable, and has such a breath of experience in the Russian culture and political environment, Her recent interview by Ezra Klein of the New York Times on her experiences in the NSC and with Trump and the current war in Ukraine were also incredibly fascinating.
I decided to read her memoir because I was hoping to get insight into her thinking and also greater detail about her experiences at the NSC focusing on her experiences working for John Bolton and first person experience with Donald Trump and his staff with regard to American relations with Russia, Russia, Ukraine, NATO.
Instead, the focus of her memoir was her upbringing in coal mining England and her experiences at Saint Andrews College and in America at Harvard, etc.
I was not particularly interested in her family story, eithershe spent a great deal of time on this subject,
Ms. Hill also spent an inordinate amount of time drawing parallels to the British and American domestic policies with regard to the impoverished and working classes, This included plenty of recommendations for making improvements to their plight involving government programs, foundations, and the like,
While these subjects are inarguably critical, they are not Hills areas of expertise, I did not find any of her policy prescriptions to be unique, She rehashed a lot of what has been written by those who have spent their careers focusing on this critical subject,
What sets Hill apart is her incredible expertise in Russian politics and its relationship to American foreign policy, In retrospect I probably should have read her biography of Putin written in, which is widely considered to be a classic,
.