Harvey Weinstein is a convicted criminal, but as bad as you may think his behavior was, your opinion of him is sure to drop another couple of notches once you read Ken Auletta’s new book. It is a cliché to say that so many who worked with and wrote about Weinstein over the years knew that he was a sexual predator, including Auletta himself, but no one would ever come forward or go on the record with accusations. Auletta makes up for lost time by tracing Weinstein’s rise and fall in minute detail, including his early family life, and communicates with Weinstein himself as he sits in prison and awaits further trials. Weinstein receives his justifiable due for his talent at spotting good scripts, and he often championed female directors, notably Jane Campion. There is no Rosebud moment in the book, so let’s just say this: his mother, Miriam, whose name, along with that of his father, Max, gave his studio Miramax its title, was apparently a first-class gorgon. Psychiatrists, start your hour.
There was a time when the Islamic State looked like it would succeed where Osama bin Laden had failed, fighting ferociously to take as much land in Iraq and Syria as possible. Michael Gordon brilliantly dissects the decisions made in national-security sessions and on the ground that resulted in U.S.-led forces gaining the upper hand. His account of the battle to retake Mosul alone is worth the price of the book; rarely has urban warfare been brought so vividly to life. ISISmay be shattered, but as Gordon warns, the successful lessons learned in the operation called Inherent Resolve have yet to be fully studied and absorbed by the U.S. military.
