by Alexa Hagerty ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2023
A powerful meditation on life, death, and sorting out what can be saved of death in life.
An anthropologist recounts sifting through the remains left by horrific crimes in Guatemala and Argentina.
There have been numerous books on forensic anthropology in the last two decades, when DNA studies and other techniques have been refined for field and laboratory studies of crime. Clea Koff’s The Bone Woman, for instance, describes research in Rwanda, Bosnia, and other killing fields. Hagerty’s first book fits neatly in this tradition, distinguishing itself from other entries by its musings on the nature of political violence. The governor of Buenos Aires Province put it most graphically in the days of the military dictatorship: “First we will kill all of the subversives, then we will kill all of their collaborators, then those who sympathize with subversives, then we will kill those that remain indifferent, and finally we will kill the timid.” Fortunately, the regime collapsed before his vision could be realized; unfortunately, many thousands of Argentinian citizens died, and Hagerty has worked diligently to identify them. The bloodbath was even worse in Guatemala, where, “in a country of eight million people, there were 200,000 dead” after years of government massacres meant to suppress civil unrest. As Hagerty uncovers mass graves and crawls into burial pits and remote caves full of bones, she reflects on the nature of her work, particularly how difficult it is to isolate single victims in a jumble of remains. “The excavation is three-dimensional, sculptural, a Rubik’s Cube,” she writes. Things become more clinical and even less human while cutting away pieces of bone in order to study the DNA, a reliable means of connecting a body to a name—“and with a name, a body can be given a proper burial.” Hagerty is soulful but unsentimental, and she closes with just the right conundrum: With so much knowledge of horrific crimes, how can one return to “the manicured lawns and temperature-controlled archives of the university”?
A powerful meditation on life, death, and sorting out what can be saved of death in life.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780593443132
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2024
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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