A well-crafted, absorbing account of Islamic women's lives as seen through the eyes of a secular-minded, Australian-born feminist journalist. Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent Brooks describes with sensitivity and clarity her conversations and relationships with Islamic women, from the blue-jean-clad, American-born queen of Jordan to a devout Palestinian who shares her abusive husband with another woman in a four-room hovel with 14 children. Many of the obstacles she describes are well known: Some Islamic women are not allowed to show flesh or pray out loud in public (their voices are too arousing and could provoke unholy thoughts in men); many professions are closed to women; and severe sexual double standards still exist. However, Brooks's lively interpretations of Islamic tradition offer a useful challenge to Western stereotypes. According to her, Mohammed's teachings on the role of Islamic women, not to mention his living example, are complex and contradictory, often in direct opposition to the gender politics of today's extreme fundamentalists. Unfortunately, the author's naive faith in her own culture's progress allows her to make some rather arrogant statements, such as, ``Like most Westerners, I always imagined the future as an inevitably brighter place, where a kind of moral geology will have eroded the cruel edges of past and present wrongs. But in Gaza and Saudi Arabia...the future is a place that looks darker every day.'' Stemming from a similar blind spot, perhaps, is the short shrift given to Middle Eastern feminist activists and scholars. Few organized women's movements are discussed, and Brooks's treatment of Egyptian feminist Nawal Saadawi's persecution by the radical Islamic group Jihad and the Egyptian government totally overlooks the influence she has had; many believe Saadawi and other feminists are responsible, for example, for the Egyptian government's partial banning of clitoridectomy. Nonetheless, Brooks is a fine storyteller, though at times her tales feel incomplete. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-47576-4
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
This exacting book adds a cogent historical investigation to the relatively few intelligent books about the father of all serial killers. Sensationalistic distortion and overimaginative theorizing have been part of this anonymous criminal's history since the first contemporaneous tabloid stories on the Whitechapel murders and continue in the inquiries of modern ``Ripperologists.'' For example, the letter signed ``Yours truly, Jack the Ripper'' that christened the legend was probably a journalist's headline-grabbing forgery, perpetuated in more hoax letters from the Ripper-crazed public. British historian Sugden corrects such myths and errors with donnish competitiveness, spending only a little time dispatching the more bizarre hypotheses (such as the recent Ripper diary hoax, the fanciful implication of the royal family in the murders, and the innumerable post-Victorian pseudo-suspects). Avoiding the penny-dreadful archives of Ripperology, he diligently approaches the voluminous police work and forensic evidence on the ``canonical'' four victims, all prostitutes, and an equal number of possible ones. Drawing on previous research and his own, he reexamines the eyewitnesses' testimony, inquest reports, newspaper accounts, and police leads (and red herrings). Although the material is still compelling and timely after a century, Sugden's sometimes sluggish prose and narrative do not bring to life the panicked atmosphere of the East End or the tensions within the police department. In the end, though many inconsistencies are swept away and many ambiguities left warily intact, Sugden produces an approximate modus operandi around which a convincing psychological profile can be constructed. His examination of suspects exonerates previous favorites, such as Michael Ostrog, whom Assistant Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten called a ``mad Russian doctor''; but with even his preferred suspect, a Polish con man and poisoner, he reaches the verdict ``not proven.'' Sugden's factual treatment of the murders provides a meticulous and reasoned profile for readers and future detectives. (Photos and maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-7867-0124-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
The murderers are still among us, but Zuroff, coordinator of Nazi war crimes research for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and others like him continue to hunt them; retelling the story of this quest ought to be more exciting. Fifty years after the Holocaust, hundreds, perhaps thousands of the men who committed mass murder are now living peacefully in the United States, England, Canada, and other democracies, writes Zuroff, ``and almost nothing was done to bring them to justice'' until about 15 years ago, when pressure by journalists and former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman led to the creation of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Zuroff traces his own path from grad student at Hebrew University to staff member at the Wiesenthal Center to Israeli point man for OSI, then back to the Center. He walks readers through the mechanics of three investigations in order to give some of the flavor of the Nazi war crimes researcher's tedious day-to-day work. This is not the cloak- and-dagger stuff of The Odessa File, but grinding paper-shuffling reminiscent of investigative reporting or academic research. By one estimate, some 10,000 war criminals were admitted to the US alone, mostly East Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis at the local level but whose role in the Holocaust is incontrovertible and underreported. Zuroff insistently hammers at the facts of local participation in mass murder and takes readers through cases in several countries in excruciating detail. Regrettably, the book reads like a series of essays, with a great deal of repetition and too much time spent on the minutiae of political wrangling in courts and with unresponsive governments. As a result, Occupation: Nazi-Hunter is sadly ineffective in presenting its brief for the continued prosecution of these war criminals. Despite compelling material, Zuroff's sludgily bureaucratic- academic prose style manages to stifle much of this important book's impact.
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1994
ISBN: 0-88125-489-4
Page Count: 385
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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