A work of ideology as much as reportage, and a wake-up call for the perpetually bogged-down state of affairs in the Middle...
A decidedly contrarian reading of recent Israeli history by a noted dissident-scholar.
For Kimmerling (co-author, Palestinians, 1993; Sociology/Univ. of Toronto), who considers himself “an Israeli patriot,” his nation took a hard turn toward fascism with Ariel Sharon’s rise to power; this rightward trend has only been worsened by the declining Israeli economy, which has led Israeli citizens to “demand more activities against ‘the other’—the Arabs.” Sharon, whom Kimmerling openly brands a war criminal for his role in the deaths of civilians during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, has been happy to oblige them, forging a strong alliance of once disparate political parties in the Knesset to the single end of committing “politicide” against the Palestinian people, removing them physically and otherwise from the landscape. The ongoing settlement of the West Bank and encroachments on the Gaza Strip are but two manifestations of this process, Kimmerling argues—a process, he suggests, that is the moral equivalent of the ethnic cleansing practiced elsewhere in our time. Sharon, he adds, has long practice in such work, having served as Moshe Dayan’s willing lieutenant in the anti-Palestinian campaigns of the early 1970s; “cooperation between Dayan and Sharon was so perfect,” he asserts, “that the minister of defense [Dayan] never had to give written orders to the general [Sharon], he had only to express wishful thinking about an issue (for example, ‘How nice it would be if there were no Bedouins in a certain area’), and Sharon would consider it an order.” Inflammatory words, those, and Kimmerling has long been criticized in Israel for voicing them. Politicide should prove similarly divisive, though it reflects well the current torn emotions of the Israeli majority, which is inclined to despise Arafat and vote Likud—but also, against Sharon’s wishes, to favor the creation of an independent Palestinian state in place of a status quo that clearly is not working.
A work of ideology as much as reportage, and a wake-up call for the perpetually bogged-down state of affairs in the Middle East.Pub Date: July 31, 2003
ISBN: 1-85984-517-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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