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KARSKI

HOW ONE MAN TRIED TO STOP THE HOLOCAUST

A lively, albeit not very scholarly, account of Jan Karski's role in the WW II Polish underground. From the very first chapter (which opens in August 1939), Tennessee journalist Wood and Polish journalist Jankowski glamorously build Karski, a Catholic Pole, into a hero by circumstance. The 25-year-old Karski, an aspiring diplomat and a lieutenant in the Polish Army, was traveling by train in his native land when the Blitzkrieg hit. Abandoning his boxcar, Karski wandered eastward until he literally bumped into Soviet forces, who captured and imprisoned him. From then on, the text recounts one exciting escapade after another during Karski's years of service as a secret agent for the Polish underground. As a chronological and factual account, this has many problems. Karski—on whose oral reminiscences the book is largely based—is the most fortunate of heroes, always one step ahead of the enemy, who is sometimes the Soviets and sometimes the Germans. (The Allied governments, which did not comprehend the dire straits of wartime Poland, come across almost as badly.) As it recounts Karski's diplomatic struggles to aid the Polish underground and to inform VIPs about the plight of Polish Jewry, the book offers little hard data, detail, or additional sources to substantiate his own account of his actions. The authors additionally fail to analyze any of the highly significant events in which Karski participated (including his role in smuggling out of Poland reports of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto). They portray Karski in broad strokes as a superhero: a man with unswerving goals, nerves of steel, and no apparent personal needs; a diehard diplomat in moral conflict with everyone but himself. It must be admitted, though, that their oversimplified saga is a real page-turner, with drama woven into every scene and an abundance of enjoyable anecdotes. Shallow, but exciting all the same. (8 pages of photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1994

ISBN: 0-471-01856-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Wiley

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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