A highly detailed and readable exploration of war stories that other histories largely overlook.
Cooper-Clark’s nonfiction debut tells the story of two camps in Kingston, Jamaica, where Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe were interned during World War II.
In careful, meticulous detail, Cooper-Clark looks at Gibraltar Camp II and Up Park Camp and refugees’ experiences there—a tale that’s largely unknown even to some WWII history buffs. Using a wide array of primary sources, the author reconstitutes the tales of dozens of Jewish refugees, many of whom only reached the comparative safety of Jamaica after long and harrowing flights from their homelands and dangerous border crossings on their way to Lisbon, known as “the refugee capital of Europe.” In addition to tracing the life stories of individual inmates and their families, the author also outlines the history of Jewish life in Jamaica before the war and renders with precision and narrative flair the complete story of the camps’ existence. “The skeins of history that link the British, the Jewish refugees, and Gibraltar Camp II require disentanglement,” she writes at one point, and this well-organized tome, generously illustrated with photographs, accomplishes this, laying vital groundwork for all future studies of the subject while also making for engaging reading. The stories of the refugees’ flights are, predictably enough, the most gripping parts of the narrative, depicting desperate families hastily grabbing whatever possessions they could before fleeing into unknown futures. The drama of these stories is heightened by Cooper-Clark’s abundant use of immediate, firsthand oral histories. Overall, these testimonies bring the difficult life in the camps into clearer focus.
A highly detailed and readable exploration of war stories that other histories largely overlook.Pub Date: July 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5255-0549-2
Page Count: 164
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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