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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
