by David Scheffer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2012
May not appeal to a general audience, but an important resource for scholars and specialists in international law.
Firsthand account of the war crimes tribunals created in the 1990s to prosecute perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Beginning in 1993, Scheffer (Law/Northwestern Univ.) led efforts to create tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia—all of which culminated in the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002. Working first as senior advisor to Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and then as U.S. ambassador-at-large for war-crimes issues in the Clinton administration, the author was deeply involved in every aspect of the quest to bring to justice political and military leaders responsible for the murder and mutilation of millions. Scheffer re-creates the period of murder and ethnic cleansing, describes the politicking required to convince nations to act and weighs the successes and missteps of diplomacy aimed at creating a new era of international justice. “I saw so much misery for so many years that my memories remain consumed by human suffering,” he writes. His graphic descriptions of mutilated victims in hospital wards underscore the urgency of his pioneering work and explain his anger and frustration at the behavior of Western nations, which offered excuses and prevarications over apprehending war-crimes suspects, with the United States taking a “dangerously isolated” policy on the international court because of the Pentagon’s fear that U.S. soldiers abroad might be prosecuted. From the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo to the trial of Charles Taylor in Sierra Leone, Scheffer recounts the highlights of this “truly international counterattack on impunity for the worst possible crimes.” Reflecting after nearly a decade of battles, the author writes that international justice is the art of the possible and requires endless patience and persistence.
May not appeal to a general audience, but an important resource for scholars and specialists in international law.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-691-14015-5
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
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by David Scheffer ; illustrated by Julie Murphy
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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