A well-wrought, timely work of personal and political commitment that should garner a great deal of deserved attention.
A British human-rights lawyer offers a chilling, evenhanded eyewitness account of his penetration inside one of America’s most notorious military bases.
Guantánamo Bay has been an American naval base since the Spanish-American War and became America’s offshore gulag for prisoners from Afghanistan in January of 2002. Smith is one of 500 lawyers now working on behalf of several thousand prisoners, many held into their fifth year at the base. Only since the author—who has worked with Death Row inmates in New Orleans—and others challenged the prisoners’s basic human rights in a court case brought before the Supreme Court in June 2004 were lawyers even allowed to see the prisoners. The author takes the reader inside the facility, reached by special military plane and divided into two unequal parts, windward and leeward. The main base and prison are situated on the windward side (hence the title). As a lawyer for the “bad men,” Smith is deemed “the enemy” by the military, and has to gain the trust of the men he represents, such as Binyam Mohamed, indicted in the wake of José Padilla’s “dirty bomb plot” of 2002, and Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for the Arab TV station al-Jazeera, which has been systematically targeted by the Bush administration for its terrorist coverage. Most interesting is Smith’s exploration of the camp’s chronic use of deception, from censorship to Orwellian semantics. He exposes the continued holding of minors and the military’s inability to assess the guilt of the inmates, offering a pertinent look into the current “politics of hatred” and the ineffectual response of this dreaded garrison.
A well-wrought, timely work of personal and political commitment that should garner a great deal of deserved attention.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-56858-374-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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