Any World War II buff will love this tale of heroism.
A remarkable World War II story of an American within the French Resistance.
Guiet teams up with former Fortune senior features editor Smith to tell the story of Guiet’s father, Jean Claude Guiet (1924-2013). At the outbreak of war, Jean Claude and his brother, Pierre, got stuck in France for a year, giving them valuable experience in French life. Fluent in idiomatic French, they were prime targets for recruitment by the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. OSS head Bill Donovan drew up the plan for American spy services with Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Both brothers were sent to England, Pierre to a desk job and Jean Claude to rigorous training in codes, wireless operations, parachuting, and unconventional warfare. Then he was assigned to an operations group named “Salesman II,” along with three others: Violette the messenger, Philippe the leader, and Bob the explosives expert (last names were never used). The authors make it absolutely clear that they were not spies but rather secret agents, trained for mayhem. Their job was to organize and galvanize the “maquisards,” the guerrilla army, to create havoc, and to prevent Nazi troops and materiel from reaching the D-Day landing sites. Though poor weather delayed their arrival in Limoges until the day after D-Day, they wasted no time finding the maquisards. The problem was to convince them all to work together. Communists, socialists, and anarchists all disagreed and often trusted no one. Philippe managed to pull everyone together, which left the matter of getting Allied equipment where it was needed. Those drops were epic in their volume, one involving 72 plane loads; another featured tricolor parachutes, which incurred Nazi wrath. In this page-turning, exciting book, the authors demonstrate an eye for significant details and a strong feel for the players.
Any World War II buff will love this tale of heroism.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2520-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
PROFILES
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.
An epistolary memoir of Nelson Mandela’s prison years.
From August 1962 to February 1990, Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned by the apartheid state of South Africa. During his more than 27 years in prison, the bulk of which he served on the notorious Robben Island prison off the shores of Cape Town, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, lawyers and fellow African National Congress members, prison officials, and members of the government. Heavily censored for both content and length, letters from Robben Island and South Africa’s other political prisons did not always reach their intended targets; when they did, the censorship could make them virtually unintelligible. To assemble this vitally important collection, Venter (A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's Notebook from Robben Island, 2006, etc.), a longtime Johannesburg-based editor and journalist, pored through these letters in various public and private archives across South Africa and beyond as well as Mandela’s own notebooks, in which he transcribed versions of these letters. The result is a necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC’s struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC’s rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not only—or even primarily—for himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book’s various sections.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-117-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
When Kaysen was 18, in 1967, she was admitted to McLean Psychiatric Hospital outside Boston, where she would spend the next 18 months. Now, 25 years and two novels (Far Afield, 1990; Asa, As I Knew Him, 1987) later, she has come to terms with the experience- -as detailed in this searing account. First there was the suicide attempt, a halfhearted one because Kaysen made a phone call before popping the 50 aspirin, leaving enough time to pump out her stomach. The next year it was McLean, which she entered after one session with a bullying doctor, a total stranger. Still, she signed herself in: ``Reality was getting too dense...all my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.'' In the series of snapshots that follows, Kaysen writes as lucidly about the dark jumble inside her head as she does about the hospital routines, the staff, the patients. Her stay didn't coincide with those of various celebrities (Ray Charles, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell), but we are not likely to forget Susan, ``thin and yellow,'' who wrapped everything in sight in toilet paper, or Daisy, whose passions were laxatives and chicken. The staff is equally memorable: ``Our keepers. As for finders—well, we had to be our own finders.'' There was no way the therapists—those dispensers of dope (Thorazine, Stelazine, Mellaril, Librium, Valium)—might improve the patients' conditions: Recovery was in the lap of the gods (``I got better and Daisy didn't and I can't explain why''). When, all these years later, Kaysen reads her diagnosis (``Borderline Personality''), it means nothing when set alongside her descriptions of the ``parallel universe'' of the insane. It's an easy universe to enter, she assures us. We believe her. Every word counts in this brave, funny, moving reconstruction. For Kaysen, writing well has been the best revenge.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-42366-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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