Thin on revelations.
Breaking news from the intelligence community: When the Cuban president leaves the planet, things will change—or they won’t.
Latell has been a CIA Castro-watcher for as long as Castro has been in power, and he has a wry knowingness about the dangers of dogma and certitude. Though he notes that the most loyal audiences for Castro’s interminable speeches have been “us, the anonymous American intelligence analysts working in distant cubicles, parsing his every word,” he allows that there’s much guesswork involved in trying to figure out what makes the bearded one tick. One issue: When did Castro become a communist? Some have ascribed the hard-left turn to bad dealings with the militantly anticommunist Richard Nixon; others say that Castro was born red. Latell adds nuance to the argument by noting that Castro was inclined to the left as early as 1948, but despised the Cuban Communist Party’s cautious leadership; the marriage was one of convenience, at least at first. Another issue: Who will succeed Castro? Latell bets on Raul Castro, the brother with whom Fidel has had an uneasy relationship from their earliest years. Latell hazards that Fidel could not have held power for so long without the backing of Raul, the head of Cuba’s military and a man apparently unafraid of executing his opponents without asking questions. Yet, he adds, Raul Castro shows certain liberal signs that hint that he may emerge in a post-Fidel scenario as someone the West can do business with—if, that is, Raul Castro even wants to be anything more than a transitional boss. Whatever the case, after Fidel’s demise, writes Latell, Raul “will finally be able to express himself without fear that he will disappoint Fidel.” In other words, we’ll have to wait and see.
Thin on revelations.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-4039-6943-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
