Moorhouse is a crackerjack travel writer and storyteller, and he has impeccable timing: Sydney will host the 27th Olympiad...
A keen tour of Sydney, Australia—streetwise and savvy, both culturally and historically—from Moorhouse (Sun Dancing, 1997, etc.).
The town named Sydney may have risen where the first convict ships from Britain hove into the glorious natural harbor, but the aboriginal population was there well ahead of them. Moorhouse begins his story with the Aborigines, by way of their Dreaming and artwork and their precarious survival, disavowing anything more than the briefest of introductions but delivering a respectful measure more. Taking the role of observer—though he is more than happy to sample the city’s food and beverages and skim the waters of Tank Stream and the harbor—Moorhouse’s sedate and ever-so melancholy voice moves on to touch all over Sydney’s history and landscape. He recounts the sorry years of the town as a penal colony, the joys of its Botanic Gardens; he delves into institutionalized racism and the bullying of the church in secular life. He takes readers on a slow ramble through the remnants of a gracefully proportioned cityscape that early learned to separate home and industry and put the emphasis on greenery, which only recently and with unfortunate results has “taken a back seat to the needs of capital” in the form of tacky high-rise financial buildings. He explains the importance of cricket and horse racing, the theater and opera and the public library. But most of all he sings the praises of the city’s fine, safe harbor. It is a waterscape that has smitten Moorhouse, a shimmering world that is the final reference point to the land that surrounds it, a working harbor that is still a valued presence when many cities have come to shun their watery origins.
Moorhouse is a crackerjack travel writer and storyteller, and he has impeccable timing: Sydney will host the 27th Olympiad this summer, which ought to spur plenty of interest in the city.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-100601-6
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
An intelligent and often witty collection of essays for pre-Baby Boomers and Boomers alike. Clausen (English/Penn State; The Moral Imagination, not reviewed) offers nine essays reflecting on the experiences of the '60s generation. In so doing, he attempts to explode some of the most cherished myths about that turbulent decade and the people it spawned. While members of his generation may have nothing more in common than do those of any other age cluster, Clausen notes that it was nevertheless shaped by political, economic, and historical forces very different from those at work when his father came of age. The title piece is a reflection on what President Kennedy meant to him and his peers. Clausen accurately depicts the ambiguity of JFK's record on issues such as Vietnam, Berlin, and civil rights, but he points out that for those who grew up in the early '60s, the idealistic promises of Camelot still grip the imagination. In ``A Decent Impersonality,'' he ruminates on the increase of informality and the use of first names for even casual acquaintances, arguing that it breeds disrespect for the person and the law. ``Reading the Supermarket Tabloids'' is a dead-on account of this growing phenomenon. In ``Dr. Smiles and Mrs. Beeton,'' Clausen reflects on manners, Victorian England, and the rise of the middle class. ``Jack-in-the-Pulpit'' considers changing tastes in vacation spots and activities. All the pieces are broadly autobiographical—some, such as ``Survivors,'' directly, and others only allusively. ``Grandfathers'' and ``Dialogues with the Dead'' are among the many dealing with changing, but still important, notions of family. Clausen's glib style may not be for everyone, and he often comes off, probably unintentionally, as a tad reactionary. But there's enough here to appeal to readers from a broad spectrum.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1994
ISBN: 0-87745-472-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A book both educational and emotional.
A Vietnam War story about the mostly unreported role of military wives who ignored protocol to help free their husbands, held as prisoners of war, from torture by the North Vietnamese.
Relying on extensive personal interviews and previously unseen documents, Lee (Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause, 2014) builds to February 1973, when 115 American POWs departed North Vietnam on U.S. military transport planes to receive health care, debriefings, and finally emergence into public view. Many of the American airmen never thought they would be shot from the sky, captured, and tortured—partly because of their ultraconfidence in their training, partly because they severely underestimated the fighting capabilities of the North Vietnamese military. Their wives back in the States, many with children, naturally felt desperate to learn the fates of their husbands. However, commanders in the American military services and diplomats in the U.S. State Department told them, often in condescending fashion, to remain quiet and docile so that negotiations with the enemy could proceed. Eventually, after years of excruciating worry, the wives of the prisoners—as well as fliers missing in action—began to actively discuss how to remedy the situation. As more years passed with no progress, wives on bases scattered around the country began organizing together. Lee’s cast of determined women is extensive and occasionally difficult to track as they enter and depart the narrative. Two of the most prominent are Sybil Stockdale (husband Jim) and Jane Denton (husband Jeremiah). (The renowned John McCain does not play a major role in the narrative.) In addition to the wrenching personal stories, the author handles context gracefully, especially regarding the wives and their ability to find their voices amid the continuing saga of an unjust war. “If these military wives hadn’t rejected the ‘keep quiet’ policy and spoken out,” she writes, “the POWs might have been left to languish in prison.”
A book both educational and emotional.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-16110-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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