Bombeck (When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home, 1991, etc.) is in top form here, detonating snappy one- liners throughout this account of her 40-plus years of marriage. And there are some unusually serious moments as well: the death, at age 33, of a close friend—the first intimation for Bombeck and her husband that life is finite and for real; a late-life and much- wanted pregnancy that ended in miscarriage; the pathos of reversing roles as the author cared for her aging, ailing mother; Bombeck's breast cancer and mastectomy. The author married Bill Bombeck in the 50's. They had three children, and family life was both satisfying and something of a letdown: ``I hid my dreams in the back of my mind. It was the only safe place in the house.'' The dreams were of writing, and a lecture in the 60's by Betty Friedan galvanized Bombeck to ask her local newspaper if she could write a column. Syndication followed, then bestselling books, and, suddenly, the equilibrium of the Bombeck marriage shifted, as Bill, a teacher, held down the home front and Erma jetted off to talk shows, book tours, and speeches. How did the couple survive such a shift? Bill, in his 50s, found something (marathon running) to excel at independent of his wife, while Erma found that ``when the applause died down....I had someone real to go home to.'' The trials of raising teenagers; of grown kids coming home to freeload in order to afford a fancy car; of offspring delaying marriage and childbearing into their 30's, much to the exasperation of prospective-Grandma Bombeck (``If it doesn't happen soon, my grandchild and I will be in diapers together'')—all are described with the author's trademark wit. A few jokes misfire, a few phrases are repetitious. Overall, though, this is as light as a feather—and could float to the top of the lists. (First printing of 500,000)
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-018322-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing examination of the circumstances surrounding the 1948 murder in Israel of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. Marton (The Polk Conspiracy, 1990, etc.) interweaves two stories as she traces the paths that led to the killing of Swedish nobleman and diplomat Bernadotte on September 17, 1948. The first story is about Bernadotte himself, who, Marton contends, was a well-meaning amateur in over his head. He had been sent by the UN to end the war that began when Arab armies invaded the newly declared state of Israel. Bernadotte's diplomatic fumbles, such as his proposal to turn Jerusalem over to Jordan, she writes, were misperceived as a mortal threat by Israelis, especially by the militant Stern Gang. The second story is about the Stern Gang, whose members, according to Marton, were driven by an understandable but misguided post-Holocaust paranoia; the resulting kill-or-be-killed attitude blinded them to the ineffectuality of Bernadotte and the UN itself. Marton has done a remarkable job of reconstructing the events leading up to this largely forgotten incident, which seriously threatened Israel's standing among its supporters. If Marton falters slightly, it is in her attempt to draw larger cautionary tales from the assassination. One has to do with the UN's continued inability to end conflicts because it lacks the will to apply meaningful force. The other involves Yitzhak Shamir, the leader of the Stern Gang and eventually Israel's prime minister. Marton contends that the mentality that justified the Stern Gang's terrorism remains a significant factor in Israeli society. She may be right on both counts. But these are highly complex issues, and her generalizations remain superficial in the absence of far more analysis and corroboration. Still, a rare glimpse behind the curtains of a terrorist act, instructive both for the light it sheds on a 46-year-old assassination and for the issues it raises relevant to today.
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42083-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
An alternative, conspiratorial retelling of major events of the last 75 years, from the authors of Unholy Trinity (1992). Former Justice Department Nazi-hunter Loftus and Australian journalist Aarons would have us believe that much of recent Western history has had as its common theme ``Get the Jews.'' However, they are far more convincing in arguing that the underlying motivations for most of the evil plots they describe were fanatical anti- communism and/or greed; Jews—mostly pre-1948 Zionists and post- 1948 Israelis—sometimes got in the way. Thus wealthy Americans invested in prewar Nazi Germany because there was money to be made, and Nazis were welcomed to postwar America as fighters against communism; the State Department and American boardrooms were filled with Arabists who had no sympathy for a Jewish state not because it was filled with Jews, but because it was empty of oil. Loftus and Aarons undermine their work by its enormous scope, which makes it virtually impossible to distinguish one chess-gambit conspiracy from another. Also, the sources for their most explosive revelations are ``confidential interviews'' with unnamed veterans of an alphabet soup of espionage agencies: Little hard evidence is presented. Still, like all good conspiracy books, this one offers plausible and intriguing explanations for gray areas of history. These range from how American companies wrested control of Saudi Arabia's oil fields from Great Britain in the 1920s and '30s to the way countries were convinced (blackmailed, say the authors, in a convoluted plot involving Nelson Rockefeller, who was allegedly selling oil to the Nazis all through WW II) to support the creation of Israel in 1948. The book is also enlivened by a rich rogues' gallery, including double (or maybe triple) agents Jack and Kim Philby; and John Foster and Allen Dulles, accused of subverting American foreign policy to their insatiable greed. A conspiracy book offering tasty morsels if one reads with a grain of salt and disregards its sensationalized and misleading title. (16 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-09535-X
Page Count: 640
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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