Schor is strongest in tracing Esperanto’s past and present, but she is less persuasive about its robust future in fostering...
The history of a new language that was invented “to bring conversation to a world of misunderstanding.”
Combining biography, history, and a memoir of her own “middle-aged anguish,” Schor (English/Princeton Univ.; Emma Lazarus, 2006, etc.) offers an illuminating, well-researched chronicle of the development of Esperanto from its origins in 19th-century Bialystok to its present iterations on six continents and in 62 countries. Herself a speaker of the constructed language, she reveals her experiences in Esperanto classes and interactions with Esperanto enthusiasts—earnest, quirky, and sometimes contentious—at conferences throughout the world. Central to her story is the father of the language, L.L. Zamenhof, an ophthalmologist who, ironically, was the son of a censor. As a Russian Jew, subject to virulent anti-Semitism, he sought a way to modernize the Jewish community and “gradually include people of other faiths and nationalities.” Communication was central to his vision: cobbling together grammar and word parts from German, English, Russian, Latin, and Greek, Zamenhof contrived a new language to enable conversation “despite differences of nationality, creed, class, or race.” Meant to be a bridge, Esperanto soon became a source of division, as followers of Zamenhof sought to seize power over the dissemination of the language and align it with their own widely dissonant political views, including imperialism, isolationism, socialism, anarchism, and communism. Multiculturalism, meant to be “the lifeblood of Esperanto,” was not easily achieved. “The problem,” said a former head of the Universal Esperanto Association, “is that language is an institution of power. Intended, Zamenhof hoped, to counter nationalism, fascism, and xenophobia, Esperanto sometimes was undermined by those same forces. As George Orwell, the nephew of an Esperanto leader, noted, “for sheer dirtiness of fighting, the feuds between the inventors of various of the international languages would take some beating.”
Schor is strongest in tracing Esperanto’s past and present, but she is less persuasive about its robust future in fostering transnational identity, “durable international networks,” and a strong sense of “belonging to the world.”Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9079-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Fantastic, authentic military fiction.
Taut, well-crafted thriller about a nuclear stand-off in the waning days of the Nixon administration.
McCurdy’s book offers a microscopic view of the officers stationed at the Minuteman Missile System located at Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base during the 1970s. Based on actual events, McCurdy examines an aborted missile launch through the perspective of Lieutenant Gray Crawford, a crack Air Force officer stationed at the base. Crawford is a hero’s hero, a military wunderkind best suited to performing under duress. Readers will likely become captivated by Crawford–both as a man and a soldier–as he carefully ponders the fateful decision that, in the tensest days of the Cold War, will head off World War III. McCurdy was once stationed as a commander at Whiteman during the early ’70s and channels his experiences into the book, lending the story a level of detail and authenticity missing from other, more dilettantish military fictions. Access to recently declassified information flavors the narrative with a certain cache; the author’s claim that some of the stories have been, until recently, top secret only ratchets up the level of excitement. But McCurdy keeps the novel’s pace exhilarating with energetic prose and imaginative renderings. He turns the Launch Control Capsule (the underground command center where the Missile System team works) into a pressure cooker where anything can happen–a sort of militaristic soap-opera set. But Whiteman is not jingoist military fiction. McCurdy may pack his book with thrills, but he is also sure to communicate the heavy ethical burdens carried by the men who, day in and day out, have their fingers on the proverbial red button. This depth of characterization provides the book with a nuanced weight and texture that assures McCurdy’s novel serious consideration.
Fantastic, authentic military fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-0976117919
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alford's fascinating unraveling of an Army cover-up reveals many American WW II soldiers to be not the great liberators, but the great looters of Europe. At the end of WW II, more than one fifth of the world's great artworks were left under the protection of American soldiers in Germany and Austria. Treasures moved from museums and private homes, either stolen by or hidden from the Nazis, were amassed in warehouses, monasteries, and castles to be safeguarded, then returned to their rightful owners. After a decade-plus of research, (and despite mysteriously missing documents and Army noncooperation), Alford found that, with the enemy defeated, some American soldiers behaved like ravenous children in an untended sweet shop, taking advantage of postwar mayhem to profit. Not content to go home with mere honor, many stole Old Master paintings, ancient coins, china, jewelry, furs, antique pistols, even concentration camp victims' ashes and wedding rings. Alford's prose is textbook-dry, but the lootings at the book's heart are pure action thriller. Captain Norman T. Byrne, appointed to protect works of art in a defeated, bombed-out Berlin, instead presided over the dispersal of valuables from a DÅrer etched plate to a stamp collection. With secret Swiss sales, buried booty, and polygraph interrogations, the Hesse crown jewel theft involving a WAC captain and her colonel lover reads more like LeCarrÇ than history. Even when alerted to wrongdoing, Army higher-ups did little to stop the thieving—either to avoid embarrassment or to cover their own misdeeds. Despite the efforts of Alford, who is now advising German and Russian authorities on recovering looted treasures, the whereabouts of many treasures remains a mystery. While victory and spoils historically go hand in hand, our perception of American Army heroes bringing goodwill and safety in the Nazis' wake is altered by this testament to the dishonesty and greed of a few no-good men.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55972-237-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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