And what did Wilson get from the gun-printing project? Apart from “a lot of bitcoin” and “a lot of hate mail,” plenty of...
A self-styled anarchist serves up a troubling vision of autonomous action that begins and ends with the prospect of digitally producing one’s own firearms.
“We are the heartworms of history.” So, rightly, writes Wilson, the founder of the collective Defense Distributed. Veterinary metaphors aside, the author sagely observes that readers will respond to his project to manufacture guns using 3-D printers in terms of personal politics: if you’re a First Amendment absolutist or a firearms or technology enthusiast of a libertarian bent, then the thought of someone freely distributing blueprints for such weapons may not be troubling. However, if you’re an ordinary citizen, the thought of still more weapons—and weapons not easily detected by X-ray scanners and the like—may induce a chill. Certainly, as Wilson writes, the owner of the 3-D printer that he leased for the job felt that the use was inappropriate; despite his jailhouse-lawyer protestations, it demanded that the leased printer be returned, prompting the response that forms the taunting title of this book. The author sometimes spins off into Kerouac-ian reveries that presumably indicate what a free spirit he is (“Its stale flicker, in red and white and blue, would struggle tonight to beat back the wrathful blackness galloping from the east”), but mostly, this is a straightforward take on the question of whether the Constitution and other laws in fact permit such activities—as various government representatives argued was not the case. Wilson likens himself to Edward Snowden, but any high-mindedness comes off as being more on the level of a fraternity prank, if a lethal and illicit one.
And what did Wilson get from the gun-printing project? Apart from “a lot of bitcoin” and “a lot of hate mail,” plenty of notoriety and a thick police file. Whether he should also get fat royalties for this book depends on your politics, too.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7826-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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