Probably the last book on the Kennedy assassination you will need to read. Veteran investigative reporter Russo has reported for both ABC and PBS documentaries on the subject. Here he begins with an autobiographical introduction to convince readers he is not a conspiracy theory nut. His description of the twists and turns in his beliefs about the Kennedy assassination suggest an open-mindedness that is reason to take this author seriously, as well as a serious obsession with the subject matter. Russo argues that the critical question is not who killed Kennedy but why, an inquiry that takes us far beyond Oswald as a lone gunman. In a nutshell, the Bay of Pigs disaster left the Kennedy brothers committed to removing Castro, even to the extent of endorsing bizarre James Bond’style assassination schemes. Bobby was personally involved in this “Cuba Project,” an effort pursued through a Cuban-American community so porous that all such activities were known by Castro in advance, and none of them was even close to successful. Oswald was also familiar with these efforts through his contact with the Cuban community, and he acted because he believed Kennedy was out to kill his hero, Castro. Whether Oswald had support from the Cubans remains a mystery, but for Russo the bottom line is that “JFK’s actions towards Castro were so outlandish, in fact, that had it not been Oswald, someone else was bound to take a shot at him.” The coverup that followed was not due to governmental complicity in the assassination, but was rather to protect Kennedy’s reputation. “For three decades, Kennedy loyalists would fight tooth and nail to perpetuate the ‘lone nut’ hypothesis and to keep the lid on the Kennedys’ attempts to murder Fidel Castro.” Russo’s extremely detailed account reveals much more that was going on, but the story in the end is that the Kennedy brothers were inexperienced and incautious, and they paid the price for a reckless foreign policy. Gripping and convincing. (50 b&w photos, not seen) ($75,000 ad/promo; first printing of 100,000; author tour; TV satellite tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1998
ISBN: 1-890862-01-0
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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