An inspirational yet grueling read that demonstrates the price some paid for patriotism in a different era and another...
Grim account of the torture and isolation suffered by U.S. airmen taken prisoner in North Vietnam.
Townley (Spirit of Adventure: Eagle Scouts and the Making of America's Future, 2009, etc.) composes a complex historical narrative covering roughly 1965 to 1973, following two parallel elements: the experiences of POWs in the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” contrasted with their families’ anguish and, more broadly, the American military’s declining fortunes in the conflict (and those of presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon). Operation Rolling Thunder, the Johnson administration’s initial air campaign against North Vietnam, resulted in a spike in downed aircraft and, ultimately, hundreds of prisoners; the North Vietnamese were determined to treat captured airmen as “war criminals” not deserving of Geneva Convention protections and to extract confessions from them for propaganda purposes. Townley focuses on “the Alcatraz Gang,” POWs who most resisted their captors, communicating covertly and documenting their torture in ingenious ways. “Their actions and unity not only ruined the Camp Authority’s plans,” writes the author, “but also enabled these men to keep their wits and self-confidence.” Meanwhile, at home, their wives at first kept silent about their husbands’ plight; the U.S. government “discouraged releasing any facts that might offend North Vietnam and disrupt the peace talks.” As they connected with each other, they became impatient with governmental inaction. By 1970, they had taken a more public profile, forming the National League of Families, demanding action from the Nixon administration and even facing North Vietnamese diplomats at the long-running Paris peace talks. Eventually, the POW cause "[bound] citizens of all politics to the servicemen fighting the war, even as more Americans turned against the conflict." But most of the narrative focuses on the POWs’ hellish daily experiences.
An inspirational yet grueling read that demonstrates the price some paid for patriotism in a different era and another unpopular war.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-00653-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
