An account of humanitarian aid that is both inspiring and troubling.
When governments fail to rescue those fleeing political terror, it’s up to volunteers to step in.
Sachs, a journalist and co-founder of Humanity Now: Direct Refugee Relief, opens her account in a ramshackle district of Athens, the capital of the nation through which, by 2015, more than 800,000 refugees from Africa and Asia had passed on the way to other parts of Europe. “They needed help,” writes the author, “but Greece, buried in debt, did not have resources to address the crisis.” The EU distributed millions of euros, but inefficiently, while the U.N. was slow to react. Consequently, private individuals from all over the world came to the aid of the refugees, providing food, medical assistance, clothing, and other necessities. Altruism underlay most of their efforts, but, as one British woman told Sachs, “We’d had our own shit.” Having experienced troubles with the immigration system herself, she had empathy for the experiences of the Syrians, Afghans, and others who had wound up in that Greek camp with no place else to go. Many volunteers mustered the bravery to swim into rough waters to rescue refugees in danger of drowning after their smugglers’ boats sank. Eventually, many refugees were able to aid themselves by taking donated food and cooking for hundreds of people at a time. Sadly, writes Sachs, for all the efforts of those involved, burnout is common: “Some long-term volunteers decided that close relationships with refugees drained them emotionally and compromised their effectiveness.” Meanwhile, some volunteers behaved as if the camp were a holiday venue; when corrected, they protested that this was how it was in Europe and that the refugees had better get used to it. In the end, the volunteer efforts were only partially successful; the situation required professionals. “The story of displacement can’t have a happy ending,” writes Sachs. Still, one can only try.
An account of humanitarian aid that is both inspiring and troubling.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781954276093
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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