Absorbing, comprehensive, and timely.
This history built around the rise and decline of the Communist Party of the United States of America is a case study in what happens when ideologies clash.
Developing the thesis that ideologies, no matter their actual tenets, tend to promote intolerance, injustice, and lockstep thinking, Marrin charts in his usual thoroughly documented way the upheavals in this country’s political and social climates between the Bolshevik Revolution and the meteoric rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy. He focuses particularly on the role of the CPUSA, characterizing it as an organization of idealists who, he asserts, did promote pacifism, women’s rights, and racial equality—if only to cause disruption and ease the spread of Communism—while turning stubbornly away from the brutal realities of Soviet society under Stalin (“…truly a monster,” the author writes with characteristic verve, “among the worst two or three humans who ever lived”). But, amid accounts of watershed events from Red Scares in 1919 and in the 1940s-’50s to the trials of the Scottsboro Boys, of rampant midcentury Soviet espionage, and the homophobic Lavender Scare purges of the McCarthy era, he also presents an only slightly less critical view of how anti-communism spurred government, business, the press, and organizations from the KKK to the ACLU to react (often badly) to the perceived threat. Readers will be gripped by the drama of past events that offer present-day lessons. Illustrations include photographs and printed propaganda.
Absorbing, comprehensive, and timely. (notes, selected sources) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-64429-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While the voice is authentic, this book is an experience, not a crafted narrative.
The posthumous memoir of a drug-abusing teen who died of cystic fibrosis.
Living in suburban Pennsylvania in the late 1990s, Mary Rose uses her journal, addressed to “Dear Nobody,” to chronicle her daily life: She’s bored, frequently on the outs with her mom and searching for something. She hangs out at the nearby rope swing with other teens, drinking and doing drugs, getting arrested and hoping to find a friend—or even better, a boyfriend. But things change when Mary Rose has to deal with something she isn’t facing head-on: She suffers from cystic fibrosis, and her condition is deteriorating due to her drinking and drug use. Mary Rose attempts to turn over a new leaf only to fall back into drinking and suffers a new tragedy. Yet through it all, as her body begins to give out, Mary Rose strives for peace through religion and searches for a connection with other people. Edited from Mary Rose’s journals after her death, this memoir necessarily suffers from the absence of an authorial hand, shifting abruptly from Mary Rose’s party-girl ways to her medical suffering. Mary Rose evidently never had a chance to reflect on the total arc of her written narrative, forcing readers to glean meaning from the disparate, angst-filled entries or just go with the flow.
While the voice is authentic, this book is an experience, not a crafted narrative. (Memoir. 14-18)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8758-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Readers who persevere will discover an affirmation of human courage.
Burakowski’s debut novel, based on her mother’s Holocaust experiences, describes a prominent Polish family’s desperate struggle to endure.
As the Nazi threat looms, patriarch Leib Gold attempts to secure a safe hiding place for his family. Leib leaves his wife, Hanna, and the children, Shoshana, Esther, and David, promising to meet the next day. Hanna never sees him again. Money and Shoshana’s fair complexion and fluent Polish help Hanna keep the rest of the family intact and alive, albeit just barely, until the Russian Army liberates Poland. Too much history is ponderously presented at the book’s outset, impeding the story and preventing development of the characters. Indeed, it takes a good third of the book to get to the gripping story of the desperate 26 months, beginning in November 1942, that the four Golds spend hiding in the annex of a barn where they are unable to stand erect. Dependent on the avariciousness of unethical Poles, crawling through sewers, living in filth, infested with lice, toileting with no privacy, fearsomely hungry, fearing death: both risks and the boredom are well-conveyed. The book concludes with a short chapter describing their post-liberation lives. Appended is a glossary of German, Polish, and Yiddish words, as well as photos of the family and the barn, which should help stir empathy.
Readers who persevere will discover an affirmation of human courage. (Historical fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-927583-74-6
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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