A dry, dreary waste of a grand subject, well below the author’s usual standard.
The life and career of a tough, profane, cool-headed secret agent who worked for British and American intelligence in both hot and cold wars.
Mitchell’s (The Freedom Summer Murders, 2014, etc.) tedious tally of quick encounters, obscure locales, and vaguely described tasks sucks the juice out of what is plainly a rip-roaring tale. Not the least deterred by blowing off her own foot in a hunting accident (she dubbed her prosthetic limb “Cuthbert”), Maryland-born Hall played such an important role building networks of informants in Vichy France (“I’ve made some tart friends,” she reported, who “know a hell of a lot!”), supplying arms and advice to insurgents, and helping prisoners escape that she was both made a member of the Order of the British Empire and awarded a Distinguished Service Cross by the U.S.—the latter being the only one given to a civilian woman in World War II. Here, though the author does direct nods to many of her intrepid associates, he buries her own exploits in generalities and extraneous minor details plus, for her later years in the CIA, eye-blearing boilerplate from internal personnel reviews. The backmatter offers plenty of documentation, but the small period photos throughout are too often only tangentially relevant to the narrative.
A dry, dreary waste of a grand subject, well below the author’s usual standard. (bibliography, endnotes, index, maps) (Biography. 12-15)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-93612-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Even rabid fans of Lennon or the 1960s will find new information and angles in this searching study.
On the verge of her 80th birthday (Feb. 18, 2013), Ono steps out of her iconic late husband’s shadow for a sympathetic profile.
The authors present her as a groundbreaking creative artist whose work has been misunderstood, not to say derided, for decades and who was unjustly vilified as the woman who broke up the Beatles. They describe a comfortable upbringing in Japan and the United States, childhood experiences in World War II and artistic development as part of New York’s avant-garde scene in the 1950s and early ’60s. The book goes on to chronicle her relationships with various husbands, including “soul mate” John Lennon, and her two children, life as a peace-activist celebrity in the ’70s, and (in much less detail) her activities, honors and exhibitions after Lennon’s death. The account is occasionally trite (“Yoko and John were stressed to the max”) or platitudinous, and it’s unlikely to persuade younger (or any) readers to appreciate Yoko’s creations—which run to works like an 80-minute film of naked rumps walking by and sets of chess pieces that are all the same color—as great art. Nevertheless, it does impart a good sense of conceptual and performance art’s purposes and expressions along with a detailed portrait of a complex woman who for several reasons has a significant place in our cultural history.
Even rabid fans of Lennon or the 1960s will find new information and angles in this searching study. (photos, timeline to 2009, resource lists) (Biography. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0444-4
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
PROFILES
Thorough to a fault, and for young readers at least, no replacement for Jim Murphy’s oldie but goodie The Long Road to...
Wagonloads of detail weigh down this overstuffed account of the Civil War’s most significant battle and its aftermath.
Martin builds his narrative around numerous eyewitness accounts, despite the implication of the subtitle. He covers events from the rival armies’ preliminary jockeying for position to Lee’s retreat, the heroic efforts to care for the thousands of wounded soldiers left behind, as well as the establishment some months later of the cemetery that was the occasion for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The battle itself, though, quickly becomes a dizzying tally of this regiment going here, that brigade charging there, the movements insufficiently supported by the small, hard-to-read battle maps. Overheated lines like “As the armies met in battle, the ground…soaked up the blood of Americans flowing into the soil” have a melodramatic effect. Moreover, as nearly everyone mentioned even once gets one or more period portraits, the illustrations become a tedious gallery of look-alike shots of scowling men with heavy facial hair. Still, the author does offer a cogent, carefully researched view of the battle and its significance in both the short and long terms.
Thorough to a fault, and for young readers at least, no replacement for Jim Murphy’s oldie but goodie The Long Road to Gettysburg (1992). (glossary, index, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 12-15)Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-532-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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