Far less revealing of the workings of radical Islam than of a youngster’s manifold confusions.
Glancing memoir of a young man’s religious infatuations and their sometimes baleful consequences.
Gartenstein-Ross, now a counterterrorism consultant, was a college student a decade ago, inclined to philosophy, soul-searching and dorm-room arguing about the meaning of life. “And strange as it may seem,” he writes, “my debates with fundamentalist Christians were milestones on the path to radical Islam”—a path made less obvious by virtue of his “Jewnitarian” upbringing. Through a roundabout spiritual quest, and encouraged by a Muslim classmate, Gartenstein-Ross came to Allah, convinced that “the true Islam was moderate.” His contacts with Muslim radicals at college and at home in Ashland, Ore., suggested otherwise, particularly in the latter spot, where he found himself among an unlikely bunch of outdoorsmen, “half redneck, half hippie, and one hundred percent Islamist.” Doctrine is one thing and the real world another. As he goes to work for the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Wahhabi charity later charged with funding terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, Gartenstein-Ross is schooled in a piety that sometimes clashes with the quirks and inconsistencies of his fellows. Still, he becomes a Muslim puritan, tossing out his rock cassettes and becoming “more amenable to the idea that sharia, or Islamic law, was the best way to govern a society,” with all its fiery condemnations of gay people, unveiled women and assorted infidels. He becomes less certain of the cause once he learns of the fate of apostates, all the while praying simultaneously for mujahedeen victory in Chechnya and an end to anti-Semitism among his fellow believers. His memoir takes a turn toward the mawkish when he goes to a Yankees game and finds himself pondering the deeper meanings of the song “New York, New York,” which in time sets him off on another path—converting to Christianity.
Far less revealing of the workings of radical Islam than of a youngster’s manifold confusions.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-58542-551-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
