by Haroon K. Ullah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 11, 2014
Ullah ends his engrossing book on a note of guarded optimism: “[F]amilies, like entire nations, must sometimes have to...
On-the-ground look at how terrorism has come to shape the way ordinary middle-class Pakistani families navigate their daily lives.
Harvard-educated, Pakistani-American policy expert Ullah (Vying for Allah's Vote: Understanding Islamic Parties, Political Violence, and Extremism in Pakistan, 2013) chronicles the political and personal impact of a series of terror bombings in Lahore, focusing on the family of one of the perpetrators, Daniyal Reza, to illustrate the pressures on middle-class Pakistanis who do not support extremism. Daniyal was estranged from the members of his family, all of whom opposed his activities. Nonetheless, after he killed himself during a suicide bombing, his father, Awais, was jailed as an accomplice to his son's crime and only released after a public outcry against the injustice. Ullah attributes the arrest to American pressure on the corrupt Pakistani government to “root out its clandestine links to insurgent groups.” As a former member of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke's Pakistan/Afghanistan policy team with family ties to Pakistan, the author was able to draw on his familiarity with the traditions and culture of the region. He spent eight years in the field researching the events surrounding a series of terrorist acts in Lahore. These included in-depth interviews with the Reza family and their associates, national and regional officials involved with the case, and former terrorist sympathizers. He describes the situation in which violence and bullying have become an everyday experience for ordinary people who do not embrace fundamentalism—e.g., women traveling alone and shopkeepers playing pop music. Ullah locates the roots of the problem in British imperial rule, with Pakistan divided into “two non-contiguous regions, West and East Pakistan [now Bangladesh].” The pressure on secular government only increased after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Ullah ends his engrossing book on a note of guarded optimism: “[F]amilies, like entire nations, must sometimes have to withstand the toughest trials and endure almost beyond endurance.”Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-166-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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PROFILES
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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