by Alexander Thurston ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2017
Though the author sets aside “Boko Haram’s treatment of women” due to “reasons of space,” he offers a highly useful, timely,...
A diagnostic study of the ultraconservative “mobile jihadist gang” from Nigeria that has taken a violent toll on government and civilians alike.
In 2014, the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the Nigerian town of Chibok brought worldwide attention to this terrorist group whose name derives in Hausa-Arabic from “Western-style education” (boko) and “forbidden” (haram). Thurston (Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching, and Politics, 2016) systematically examines the movement’s origins as a religious study group in 2002 in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, led by the charismatic preacher Muhammad Yusuf, through subsequent chronological phases: a decisive turn to violence by 2009, uprising (and death of Yusuf) followed by government suppression, and re-emergence in 2010 as a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. In the first chapter, “The Lifeworld of Muhammad Yusuf,” the author provides a solid overview of the fluctuating society in northeastern Nigeria from the 1970s, when Yusuf was born and the north of the country lagged in development compared to the south, through the 1990s, when disruptive urbanization and globalization pushed people into migration, poverty, and illiteracy. Western schools, a remnant of British colonialism—Nigeria became independent in 1960—were seen as highly suspect places. As Thurston writes, “Western-educated politicians and technocrats have presided over a system that has stolen much of Nigeria’s wealth, leaving much of the population poor.” With Christian-Muslim tensions rising, ultraconservative Salafi teachings became more popular. The author delves deeply into what Yusuf was actually teaching: a core doctrine of religious exclusivism that clearly demonized anyone thinking otherwise, with a focus on the Quranic slogan, “Chaos is worse than killing.” Thurston also weighs the mostly ineffectual government responses and urges a “long-term, fine-grained approach to understanding the Boko Haram crisis.” This book is a good starting point.
Though the author sets aside “Boko Haram’s treatment of women” due to “reasons of space,” he offers a highly useful, timely, illuminating work about a little-understood terrorist group.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-691-17224-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 13, 2015
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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