Next book

YELLOW RIBBON

THE SECRET JOURNAL OF BRUCE LAINGEN

The personal journal of the highest-ranking US envoy to be interned during the 444-day siege that became known as the Iran Hostage Crisis. Relatively speaking, Laingen was fortunate. Posted to Tehran in mid-1979 as chargÇ d`affaires while Washington decided whether to accredit a full-fledged ambassador to the theocratic regime that overthrew the Shah, he was away from his office when militant ``students'' seized the American embassy and took its staff prisoner. Consequently, the author spent all but the last three weeks of his confinement with two subordinates in the reception rooms of the Iranian Foreign Ministry. More like birds in a gilded (if dirty) cage than political prisoners, the three detainees had access to books, newspapers, radio, and TV; they also had plenty to eat, endured no physical or psychological abuse, and received periodic visits from fellow members of the local diplomatic community. Constant contacts with the outside world enabled Laingen (who turned 58 during his ordeal) to keep an impressively detailed log of his captivity and to remain informed on current events, including the ayatollahs' efforts to make an Islamic state of Iran. Much of the material here, including letters to his wife and three sons, was spirited out of the chancellory by Swiss colleagues. Taken together, the near-daily entries offer an affecting, albeit kaleidoscopic, account of a good and decent man's response to protracted adversity. Lonely, hopeful, despairing, frustrated, resigned, and outraged by turn, Laingen relied on traditional values—duty, honor, country, family, religion—to sustain himself. That these oft-deprecated virtues obviously helped him through some very rough times represents the most important message of this low-key testament. (Illustrations, including facsimiles of journal entries smuggled out of Iran.)

Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1992

ISBN: 0-02-881030-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992

Categories:
Next book

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

Categories:
Next book

IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

Close Quickview