The chilling story of a prisoner in North Korea.
Born in Labor Camp 14, the child of political prisoners, Shin Dong-hyuk spent 23 years imprisoned, initially with his mother and other families in cramped quarters with no running water, no furniture and little soap. For protein, there were insects and rats. For a while, there was school, one without books or real education. Nothing was taught about the outside world, other than that it was peopled by enemies. At age 10 Shin began mining coal for the love of the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. As an adolescent he was tortured viciously in an underground cell, and then taken to witness the execution of his mother and brother. He was not affected by the spectacle; he did not grieve. They had spoken of escape, and Shin had reported them. After learning from older prisoners about other lands and the foods to be had there, he planned his own escape. Through a series of improbable events, he made it to China, South Korea and then America. His spiritual journey—still in progress—has not been easy. His is one man’s remarkable story of deliverance from a hidden land where fact-checking is virtually impossible. Economist contributor Harden (A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia, 1996, etc.), nevertheless, has done his research, and Shin’s adventure largely conforms to those of the few others who have escaped captivity. The text was completed before the Dear Leader’s death. Camp 14 has been in operation for half a century, and we can only suppose that the new, baby-faced Supreme Leader will continue the legacy of the dynasty.
A terrifying story of brutal captivity and unremitting misery and the difficult adjustment to subsequent life in a very different place.Pub Date: April 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02332-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
Categories: WORLD | HISTORY | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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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. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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