by M. Stanton Evans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 6, 2007
A detailed account of McCarthy and of the CPUSA marred by ideological blinders. For true believers only.
A revisionist biography of Joseph McCarthy and the red-baiting movement he spawned.
Most Americans look upon McCarthyism as part of one of the darkest and most shameful periods in the country’s history, one in which past associations, flimsy as they may have been, were drudged up and examined in the public square to foment hysteria and advance a craven politician’s career. But not Evans (The Theme Is Freedom, 1994, etc.), who views McCarthy as the misunderstood Cassandra, the lone truth-teller with the courage and insight to expose the vast red conspiracy that supposedly infiltrated the highest levels of government. The McCarthy portrayed here was ultimately undone by slicker, more media-savvy politicians with a vested interest in keeping quiet the Stalinists in our midst who were plotting the overthrow of the American government. The book is exhaustively researched and impeccably sourced, as it traces the rise of the Communist Party from the 1930s onward and identifies the lives and careers of fellow travelers as they worked their way up through the State Department. Though overlong, it is also well-written and accessible. But it’s highly unlikely that Evans will win any converts. McCarthy wasn’t a victim but a craven brute who played fast and loose with the facts, someone perfectly willing to destroy lives and reputations for political gain. A clear-eyed account of the Communist Party in midcentury would be most welcome, but would need to include an honest appraisal of the man properly regarded as its chief villain, rather than the Commie-under-your-bed conspiracy Evans lays out here.
A detailed account of McCarthy and of the CPUSA marred by ideological blinders. For true believers only.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4000-8105-9
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Crown Forum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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