A sturdy tale of terror and counterterror that speaks to events that are happening even now.
Fast-paced narrative account of events in the Middle East 35 years ago, the opening salvo in a war that continues to unfold.
Burton and Katz (co-authors: Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi, 2013) open at a climactic moment: the kidnapping, in March 1984, of the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley. His Hezbollah captors tortured him for months before finally killing him. The authors focus sharply on key players and actors in the murder, which was but one act in an orchestrated campaign that played out on a stage marked by chaos. By their account, U.S. policy in the region was not well-articulated, and Reagan administration officials were divided over whether and how to support Israel in its actions against neighboring Lebanon and Syria, the former of which had emerged as a center of Iranian activity in the Middle East, the latter as “the Soviet Union’s chief client in the Arab world.” Buckley’s abduction closely followed a bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, a second suicide bombing of a Marine Corps barracks, and other terrorist actions coordinated by Imad Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah officer who planned operations against the U.S. and Israel for decades before finally being killed by the CIA and Mossad. Mughniyeh, the authors make clear, was serving Iranian interests, and Iran’s activities in Lebanon amounted to an undeclared war against the U.S., “a rapid march of calculated measures defined by cold-blooded ruthlessness.” These matters have since been revisited many times over, most recently by the Trump administration’s resumption of sanctions against Iran, but they resound in haunting ways throughout these sometimes-redacted pages—for, after all, Buckley’s murder and the back-channel dealings that would soon become known as Iran-Contra are roughly contemporaneous events. As the authors suggest, it seems that only insiders sworn to secrecy knew “that the spies didn’t do enough to save William F. Buckley.”
A sturdy tale of terror and counterterror that speaks to events that are happening even now.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-98746-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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