A vigorous, original study that adds to the ongoing scholarship.
A British academic builds on previous scholarship to make a bold thesis—that Hitler’s principal obsession was not communism but rather “Anglo-America” and global capitalism.
Situating his argument alongside the vast research of others, which he carefully delineates in a pointed introduction, Simms (History/Univ. of Cambridge; The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men Who Decided the Battle of Waterloo, 2015, etc.) stresses the global processes that motivated Hitler—e.g., the crash of 1929 and the Depression—and the galvanizing might of the Americans, which he believed was largely due to the German emigrant drain from the motherland. The author draws from sources he believes to be neglected as well as a deep reading of Mein Kampf, and he locates the origins of Hitler’s strategic approach to the enemy in the years during and following World War I, after which he emerged “as a rather lonely figure on the margins of German and world history.” Moving thematically—from “Humiliation” to “Fragmentation,” “Unification,” “Mobilization,” “Confrontation,” and “Annihilation”—Simms shows how Hitler’s early experience of “humiliation” (as an artist, soldier witnessing Germany’s defeat, and leader of the failed putsch) led into an obsession with the successful Anglo-Saxon model—i.e., the American dream, at least partly driven by German emigration. His plan for the vast expansion of the Reich “had less to do with hatred of Bolshevism and eastern European Jewry, and more to do with the need to prepare the Reich for a confrontation or equal coexistence with an Anglo-America whose dynamism mesmerized [him].” Thus, Simms asserts, Hitler’s motivation was less a hatred of communism (the classic argument) than obsession with the racial bolstering that Germany needed to take its rightful place in the global order. Moreover, Simms finds that in building his plan for an expanded empire, Hitler used the model of the British Empire’s colonialism and the American colonization of the West.
A vigorous, original study that adds to the ongoing scholarship.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-465-02237-3
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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