Spirited prose and often entertaining personal testimonies can’t save an uneven narrative that too often lapses into bland...
Repetitious history of a vanishing community.
The title refers to the fewer than 50 remaining Jews living in the province of Kerala, on India’s tropical southwest shores. The Paradesi, or “white” Jews, live in Mattancherry; across the river at Ernakulam live the Malabari, or “black” Jews. Both groups’ ancestries date as far back as the great Jewish Diaspora of 70 CE. For centuries these Jews prospered in religiously tolerant India, playing important parts in business and at court, until their numbers grew to thousands. The crux of the story, writes journalist Fernandes (Holy Warriors: A Journey Into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism, 2007), is the long-running argument between the white and black Jews regarding who arrived in Kerala first; this has made all the difference as the community nears extinction. The author chronicles soured relations between black and white, the establishment of an apartheid system and the interbreeding that prevented the maintenance of a “pure” Jewish community. Fernandes’s attempt to depict their demise as tragic is unpersuasive. As one elder Paradesi summed up, “Now after the others left, gone to Israel, gone overseas, or just gone—the Kashmiris, the Muslims, the Christians have come.” This is the oft-told story of many small towns: The younger generation was no longer committed to living in a backwater, upholding traditions of the older generation just to keep the town alive. Furthermore, there is nothing “forgotten” about the Kerala Jews’ story. Political and spiritual world leaders have walked down their dusty streets for decades, visiting the enclave in a show of homage to the ancients who succeeded handsomely, but whose time has gone. The book degenerates into a series of interviews in which anecdotal evidence, opinion, rumor and redacted history supersede thoughtful accounting.
Spirited prose and often entertaining personal testimonies can’t save an uneven narrative that too often lapses into bland travelogue.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-60239-267-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
A compelling book dealing with the question of MIAs in Vietnam. As a journalist Keating has worked for Soldier of Fortune magazine and the conservative Washington Times. Nonetheless, in the present volume, she uses her skills as an investigative reporter to attack the notion that American POWs and MIAs were left behind in Indochina. A vocal lobby clamors for a full accounting of all MIAs, numbered by the federal government at around 1,200. Reported sightings add fuel to the belief that American soldiers were held hostage by the Vietnamese and abandoned by a government eager to put the war behind it. After all, the logic goes, hadn't it happened to the French in the 1950s? The truth, however, according to Keating, is that the US experience is not that of the French: No American POWs remain. And aside from a few known defectors, all the MIAs are dead. Citing the 80,000 missing from WW II, Keating points out that MIAs are part of the nature of modern warfare, in which the recovery or identification of remains is often impossible. In the case of the Vietnam POWs, however, the military had reduced the number of true ``missing'' to under 100 before a political hue and cry forced them to inflate the MIA list with the names of many men known to be dead but whose bodies were not found. Sightings of live POWs are hoaxes, says Keating, designed to fuel a political machine or to extort money from relatives on the slim hope that the men are alive. She slams, in particular, mercenaries like Bull Simons and Bo Gritz, who plan raids into Indochina (most of which never occur) in search of the lost. The real conspiracy, writes Keating, is not committed by a government bent on hiding a scandal but by those who prey on the hopes and fears of the ones truly left behind—the families of the dead. Highly persuasive.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43016-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
Historical hindsight is always 20/20, as this otherwise thoughtful and well-written comparative biography of two important Civil War commanders shows. On the surface, the lives of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the North and Edward Porter Alexander of the South have little in common. Alexander was a career officer, educated at West Point; Chamberlain was a citizen soldier who taught rhetoric in college before volunteering to fight. Alexander was born on a Virginia plantation; Chamberlain came from rock-ribbed Maine. Beneath these superficial differences, however, Golay (The Civil War, not reviewed) maintains that more united these men than divided them. Both fought in some of the major engagements of the Civil War, and though neither ever rose above middle-level commands, they enjoyed the ear of those more powerful, exerting an influence beyond their rank. Both reached the critical point of their careers at Gettysburg, where Chamberlain's bold defense of Little Round Top arguably saved the battle for the Union, while Alexander's confusion concerning orders and battle strategy led to the disastrous Pickett's charge. Following the war, both men went on to civilian success. Chamberlain became president of Bowdoin College and governor of Maine. Alexander was a successful railroad executive. But neither man, argues Golay—making use of their personal papers and writings—ever escaped his past. The two had found their greatest fulfillment and their true mÇtier as soldiers in the Civil War, and they both wrote and lectured extensively about their experiences. But the author occasionally judges his subjects with the wisdom of hindsight, as when he claims that the men never really understood the respective causes for which they fought (Alexander thought the war was an inevitable part of the country's evolution; Chamberlain viewed war as, Golay says, ``a test of character''). A riveting portrait of two men who felt they had outlived their historical moment.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59285-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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