In a book subtitled, ``Life at a Shelter Through a Young Girl's Eyes,'' an unnamed girl describes her life in a homeless shelter, from the night she arrives with her family to their departure for a new apartment. The black-and-white collage of cropped photographs are sometimes tinted; an appalling design and low-quality photos detract from the message of comfort and hope that underscores the activities shown. Life at the shelter looks like so much fun that it's no surprise that the narrator is ambivalent about leaving. With a dearth of materials on the homeless, it's tempting to take any port in a storm. Despite the good intentions shot through this project, the confusing, jumbled presentation does no service to its subject or readers. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-940895-34-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
Still, his account of the war's origins, though surely arguable at many points, fills in many gaps.
If you listen closely, you can hear the guns of August blasting a decade and more before WWI actually began.
Fromkin (History/Boston Univ.; The Way of the World, 1999, etc.) delivers a thesis that will be new to general readers (though not to specialists): WWI came about because of the very different, but conveniently intersecting, ambitions of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, and the signs were evident long before the fighting began. The Habsburgs wanted to crush Serbia, which they (perhaps rightly) perceived to be a potent threat to Austro-Hungarian designs in the Balkans; the Austrian chief of staff “first proposed preventive war against Serbia in 1906, and he did so in 1908–9, in 1912–13, in October 1913, and May 1914: between 1 January 1913 and 1 January 1914 he proposed a Serbian war twenty-five times.” Just so, the Kaiser wanted to crush Russia, which he regarded as Germany’s one real rival for European dominance; war against Serbia would provide a useful pretext, though it wasn’t essential. Indeed, writes Fromkin, when a Slavic nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, the rest of Europe practically yawned; even Austria did not retaliate immediately, despite Germany’s urging to get on with the game. “Austria did not play its part very well,” Fromkin writes, and did not even bother declaring war on Germany’s enemies until some time after the war had actually begun. Similarly, Germany neglected to declare war on Serbia, “the only country with which Austria was at war and which, according to Vienna, was the country that posed the threat to Austria’s existence.” Fromkin’s notion that a pan-German conspiracy caused WWI is credible, even if the events he describes sometimes seem more a comedy of errors than a model of efficient militarism.
Still, his account of the war's origins, though surely arguable at many points, fills in many gaps.Pub Date: March 25, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-41156-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tenacious attempt to answer the question, “How do ordinary little human cogs make up a torture machine?”
Through the grim travails of one of Saddam Hussein’s top generals, journalist Steavenson (Stories I Stole, 2003) examines the dictator’s edifice of totalitarianism and moral corruption.
Taking her title from a verse of the Koran promising to mete out justice even to the “weight of a mustard seed,” the author weaves a fascinating account of how good men went terribly wrong. Steavenson worked as a journalist in Baghdad in 2003–04 and continued her interviews of exiled Iraqis in London and elsewhere, probing deeply into the stories of former Baath Party officials. Through a high-level Iraqi doctor who had served in the medical corps during the course of four Iraqi wars, the author was put in touch with the surviving family of Kamel Sachet, a commander of the special forces and general in charge of the army in Kuwait City during the Gulf War. The general was shot as a traitor by order of the Iraqi president in 1998. Born to an illiterate family in 1947, Sachet became a policeman and then joined the special forces, rising through the ranks to major. He distinguished himself during the Iran-Iraq war, gaining Hussein’s trust but also his occasional ire, which led to prison and torture. Sachet led the assault into Kuwait, but with the retreat and subsequent scourge by the United States, he became disillusioned with the violence and bloodshed and retired as a devout Muslim. Steavenson ably explores his and others’ obedience in fulfilling the dictator’s grisly demands, echoing works by Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi and Stanley Milgram.
A tenacious attempt to answer the question, “How do ordinary little human cogs make up a torture machine?”Pub Date: March 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-172178-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Collins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
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