Uneven but engaging.
A fast-paced but disjointed debut about the 2002 coup against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
On April 11, 2002, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marched through the streets of Caracas in an attempt to coerce Chávez into resigning. Before they reached the presidential palace, gunmen opened fire on the demonstrators, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the downfall of Chávez, the abrupt fraying of the opposition and Chávez’s improbable resumption of the presidency only 72 hours later. Leaning heavily on interviews with participating social and political actors from both sides of the ideological spectrum, Nelson (Center for American and World Cultures/Miami Univ.) attempts to re-create the emotions and experiences of the three-day coup “through the eyes of the everyday Venezuelans who were there.” The author’s breakneck pace initially proves problematic. The introduction provides insufficient grounding not only in the origins and evolution of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution but also in the sociopolitical conditions that instigated the coup. Moreover, the clipped chapters in the opening section ricochet rapidly among a wide cast of characters without taking time to develop their stories. It is only after Chávez relinquished power that Nelson’s narrative finds its bearing. In particular, the author paints a vivid portrait of Chávez in exile. Whisked away to a naval base on the northern coast, Chávez ran through a gamut of conflicting emotions, defiantly refusing to resign but also breaking down into tears at one point. Meanwhile, the opposition, spearheaded by the business and labor sectors, was quickly unraveling. When Pedro Carmona, a wealthy businessman and the interim president, decided to dissolve the legislative and judicial branches and revoke the Constitution, many Venezuelans feared that the country’s elites would enact revenge on Chávez loyalists. The military and labor unions abandoned the transitional government, and shortly thereafter, a stunned Chávez was flown back to the city. In a final twist, Nelson demonstrates that the coup actually rejuvenated Chávez’s presidency, allowing him to portray the opposition as untrustworthy conspirators.
Uneven but engaging.Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-56858-418-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
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
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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