The name of Auschwitz has become synonymous with the Holocaust and so it is fitting that an entire volume be devoted to describing what happened there. Scrupulously documented, this is short, but packs a lot of information. For this subject, a picture really is worth a thousand words and Lawton carefully lays out the evidence as if with an eye towards the deniers, about which a chapter is included. He uses only the most conservative estimates for the number of people killed at Auschwitz and explains how it is that estimates can be made when the bodies of the victims were burned to smoke and ash and the Germans took such pains to destroy the evidence. Each two-page spread has its own chapter heading, among them “The Transports,” “The Gas Chambers,” and “Burning the Bodies.” A well laid-out combination of text, archival photographs, maps, diagrams of the camp, and survivor testimony provides a many-faceted perspective. Lawton succeeds in conveying the single-minded, machine-like efficiency with which the Germans approached the “final solution” for the “Jewish problem.” Disturbing photographs are included—as they must be if the truth is to be told—of piles of dead bodies, a skeletal girl who was a victim of medical experimentation, naked, emaciated men whose private parts are hidden by text, and an inmate who threw himself against the electric fence, a suicide. The jacket-cover text notes that ordinary people helped carry out the evil perpetrated at Auschwitz and asks: “How did it happen?” While Auschwitz doesn’t answer the question of how this could happen, it certainly captures the horror of what did happen. Gut-wrenching, this will be invaluable to anyone seeking to educate children and young adults. (Nonfiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7636-1595-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
The title reflects the general tone of this study of the pandemic that killed half a million Americans in six months, and 20 to 40 million worldwide. After describing the disease’s symptoms (“Delirious from lack of oxygen, these young men rolled and thrashed about on their beds and cots, moaning, mumbling, and spitting up blood”), the spread, and the frantic but ineffective efforts to control it, Getz (Life on Mars, 1997, etc.) chronicles scientists’ long search for the specific cause—which involved much digging up of corpses and experiments with diseased tissue. Despite some recent breakthroughs, that search still continues for, as the author points out, though the 1976 scare turned out to be a false alarm and we are better prepared now than in 1918, new flu strains appear frequently, and we are all still potential sitting ducks for a deadly one. Period photos are interspersed with solemn, impressionistic art from McCarthy; an accessible bibliography will give a leg up to readers who want to know more. Combining cogent accounts both of a worldwide tragedy and some classic medical detective work, this is certain to please and to sober a wide audience. (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-8050-5751-X
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
Marrin’s biography of our first president is packed with information, but is problematic in its presentation. In his characteristically epic style, he portrays an intriguing George Washington: militarily inexperienced, socially retreating, but with a hard edge that helped him to gain wisdom through his mistakes and earn respect as a commander. Copiously documented, the narrative should inspire readers to learn more about Washington. But Marrin undercuts his own authority with several stylistic problems. He regularly uses sweeping statements that, without clarification or context, are debatable (“Great Britain ruled the mightiest empire in all of human history”), or illogical, e.g., “Had it not been for Charles Lee, Washington might have won the war that day. Because of Lee, it would drag on for another five years.” (Lee may well have kept the war from ending that day, but he himself did not have anything to do with its ultimate length.) In an unusual comparison he suggests that “a war dance was like a ‘pep rally’ before a college football game.” He relies on the present tense to lend drama to his scenes, in a way that can only be considered fiction (“At once, a plan formed in the British General’s mind”), or that makes an interpretation but presents it as fact (“Someone, undoubtedly without his [Washington’s] permission, had driven a pole into the ground amid the corpses”). Marrin’s style makes for dramatic reading here and there, but his narrative is long and often bogged down in details, and he eventually undermines any dramatic tension by overusing his tricks. The book is well illustrated on nearly every page with black-and-white reproductions of etchings, drawings, and maps; notes, a bibliography, and index (not seen) complete it. Marrin’s book may be useful to young readers for its extent of documented information, but they may find better reading elsewhere. (Nonfiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-46268-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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