by Åsne Seierstad & translated by Nadia Christensen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2008
A sympathetic, brave work from a deeply engaged war correspondent.
Norwegian journalist Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul, 2003, etc.) movingly reports on the bleak fallout from the wars in Chechnya.
Her atmospheric and heartbreakingly sad text records two treks to the newly independent Muslim country: in 1995, shortly after the disastrous invasion by Russian troops under Boris Yeltsin, and again 12 years later when the war raged anew under Vladimir Putin. Seierstad was a 24-year-old rookie journalist eager to join the fray (despite warnings of sniper attacks) when she hitched a ride with Russian troops into Grozny in 1995. She found the city emptied of men, who were fighting in the mountains, and full of starving, terrified women. Its hospitals, orphanages, waterworks and homes had been demolished by Russian attacks. The Chechens’ lives had been blown apart by war, and thousands of orphans had been left to survive on their own. Following the author’s initial trip, Aslan Maskhadov was elected as Chechnya’s first president in 1997. He proved unable to control the spread of wahhabism, a radical form of Islamic fundamentalism that split the country and led to new conflict with Russia. After Maskhadov’s assassination in March 2005, Seierstad found her way back into the country and met Hadijat, called the Angel of Grozny because she never turned away a child in need. In her unofficial orphanage Hadijat and her husband Malik cared for scores of children who had been abandoned, abused and traumatized, left with few prospects for education or a future. The author listened to these suffering youngsters and chronicles their tales of torture, deportation and misery. She also offers her observations on the absurdities of Chechnya’s new, Soviet-style dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, who simply denied the existence of 20,000 orphans. Chechens pride themselves as fearless freedom fighters and frequently take the wolf as their symbol, Seierstad notes, but they “forgot that the wolf is a beast of prey that mercilessly pursues every weak, defenseless animal.”
A sympathetic, brave work from a deeply engaged war correspondent.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-465-01122-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
HISTORY | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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by Åsne Seierstad ; translated by Seán Kinsella
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by Åsne Seierstad & translated by Sindre Kartvedt
by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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