The autobiography of perhaps the most visible Palestinian spokesperson after Yasir Arafat. Ashrawi was head of the English department of Birzeit University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when she burst into popular consciousness in 1988 on Nightline. The brilliant, outspoken Ashrawi was labeled the star of that first-ever public debate between Palestinian leaders and Israeli officials. Here she writes at length about the roots of her more than two decades of political activism as a Palestinian and a feminist, and about life with her husband and two daughters. One of her goals, she says, is to add a human dimension to the simplistic image many people have of Palestinians. More riveting, however, are her insider's descriptions of the processes that have led to the current peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Her revelations of behind-the-scenes debates and political maneuvers are a must-read for anyone interested in Middle East politics. But this book must also be read for what it reveals between the lines. Superficially, Ashrawi seems like a sycophant of Arafat, and her uncritical attitude toward the PLO chairman appears to mar an otherwise uncompromisingly honest and believable book. But if Ashrawi never has an unkind word to say about the man, she is far less gentle toward some of his policies, including the PLO's costly refusal to condemn Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the PLO's tendency, as Israel cedes it some measure of authority in the territories, to fill positions on the basis of politics and favoritism rather than talent and expertise. Ashrawi sheds light on the tension between Palestinians inside and outside the territories that is crucial to understanding current and past events. Ashrawi offers a vivid rendering of the Palestinian side of events that have led to a vastly altered but still deeply troubled relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 50,000; author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80294-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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