A potent book that readers won’t soon forget, and a warning of what can come of an insatiable market that knows no borders.
GQ and Mother Jones contributing editor Bowden (Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future, 2009, etc.) digs into the complexities behind the ominous escalation of violence in Ciudad Juárez, a city across the border from El Paso that now has the tragic distinction of being the most dangerous city in the world.
In 2006, shortly after his controversial election, Mexican President Felipe Calderón, whom half of the nation considers illegitimate, declared war on the region’s drug cartels. He sent thousands of federal troops to Juárez’s state of Chihuahua, vowing to hunt down the leaders of the major drug distributors. At the same time, women in Juárez began to disappear, and their decomposing bodies began turning up in shallow graves in the desert. The disturbing trend was echoed by a simultaneous increase in rape and domestic violence in all of Juárez’s social strata. For the city’s unskilled labor force, the primary alternative to the drug business is a job in a maquila, whose ultra-low wages assure manufacturers from El Norte cheap production of goods for the global economy. Add to the mix a local police force willing to sell its guns to the highest bidder, and you have the makings of a potentially viral social disaster. Bowden began following the murders in March 2008. Before long, they outpaced his ability to contextualize them. Were they all drug-related? How many were committed for revenge or just the thrill of it by killers taking advantage of the growing lawlessness? Were the cartels behind them, or the police? Or the army, charged with restoring order? Straightforward answers elude the author, as they do nearly every observer—the city’s journalists, who are challenged to report on crimes without inciting killers to come after them; the social workers who deal with the human detritus who survive the violence; even a reformed sicario (assassin) who can only lovingly relate the gruesome details of his former craft but is clueless about who ordered his services or why. Bowden uses his tremendous talents to tell a haunting, darkly poetic story of a city’s horrifying descent into madness and anarchy.
A potent book that readers won’t soon forget, and a warning of what can come of an insatiable market that knows no borders.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-56858-449-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.
An exuberant celebration of more than 100 women who shaped the myths and realities of New York City.
In her debut book, journalist Scelfo, who has written for the New York Times and Newsweek, aims to counter histories of New York that focus only on “male political leaders and male activists and male cultural tastemakers.” As the author discovered and shows, the contributions of women have been deeply significant, and she has chosen a copious roster of personalities, gathered under three dozen rubrics, such as “The Caretakers” (pioneering physicians Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, who enacted revolutionary hygienic measures in early-20th-century tenements); “The Loudmouths” (Joan Rivers and Better Midler); and “Wall Street” (brokerage firm founder Victoria Woodhull and miserly investor Hetty Green). With a plethora of women to choose from, Scelfo aimed for representation from musical theater, law enforcement, education, social justice movements, and various professions and organizations. Some of the women are familiar (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her preservation work; Brooke Astor for her philanthropy), some iconic (Emma Lazarus, in a category of her own as “The Beacon”), and some little-known (artist Hildreth Meière, whose art deco designs can be seen on the south facade of Radio City Music Hall). One odd category is “The Crooks,” which includes several forgettable women who contributed to the city’s “cons and crimes.” The author’s brief, breezy bios reveal quirky facts about each woman, a form better suited to “The In-Crowd” (restaurateur Elaine Kaufman, hardly a crowd), entertainers (Betty Comden, Ethel Waters), and “The Wisecrackers” (Nora Ephron, Tina Fey) than to Susan Sontag, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion. Nevertheless, the book is lively and fun, with something, no doubt, to pique anyone’s interest. Heald’s blithe illustrations add to the lighthearted mood.
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58005-653-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
An educational and inspiring biography of seminal American innovators.
A charmingly pared-down life of the “boys” that grounds their dream of flight in decent character and work ethic.
There is a quiet, stoical awe to the accomplishments of these two unprepossessing Ohio brothers in this fluently rendered, skillfully focused study by two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning and two-time National Book Award–winning historian McCullough (The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, 2011, etc.). The author begins with a brief yet lively depiction of the Wright home dynamic: reeling from the death of their mother from tuberculosis in 1889, the three children at home, Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine, had to tend house, as their father, an itinerant preacher, was frequently absent. McCullough highlights the intellectual stimulation that fed these bookish, creative, close-knit siblings. Wilbur was the most gifted, yet his parents’ dreams of Yale fizzled after a hockey accident left the boy with a mangled jaw and broken teeth. The boys first exhibited their mechanical genius in their print shop and then in their bicycle shop, which allowed them the income and space upstairs for machine-shop invention. Dreams of flight were reawakened by reading accounts by Otto Lilienthal and other learned treatises and, specifically, watching how birds flew. Wilbur’s dogged writing to experts such as civil engineer Octave Chanute and the Smithsonian Institute provided advice and response, as others had long been preoccupied by controlled flight. Testing their first experimental glider took the Wrights over several seasons to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to experiment with their “wing warping” methods. There, the strange, isolated locals marveled at these most “workingest boys,” and the brothers continually reworked and repaired at every step. McCullough marvels at their success despite a lack of college education, technical training, “friends in high places” or “financial backers”—they were just boys obsessed by a dream and determined to make it reality.
An educational and inspiring biography of seminal American innovators.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-2874-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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