Hemming has uncovered a man determined not to be known and in so doing, has provided us with delightful reading.
The dramatic story of the remarkable British spymaster who may have been the model for the James Bond character M.
Maxwell Knight (1900-1968) recruited men and women who were quiet but intense, naturalists like him—though he was unlikely to find anyone as devoted to a wide variety of exotic animals. He looked for those who could work unnoticed, efficiently listening, remembering, and reporting what went on in communist and fascist organizations. Searching for a livelihood after World War I, Knight joined Sir George Makgill’s private intelligence agency. Makgill worked for industrialists worried about labor unions and the rise of communism. Knight’s first assignment was to join the British Fascists—which, in the 1920s, was not yet politically abhorrent—and to find potential recruits, an easy task given his mystical magnetism. At this time, he was friends with William Joyce, who would become, during World War II, the treasonous Lord Haw-Haw. They joined the paramilitary wing of the BF, where Knight learned the spy trades of kidnapping and his specialty, breaking and entering. In 1929, Knight was recruited by MI5 to fight communism, eventually leading the M Section. His “grey people” learned to become small and insignificant, remembering everything and hoping no one remembered them. Knight directed his people like he once ran his jazz band: moderating tempo, watching overall direction, and improvising when necessary. Hiring Anna Wolkoff to work as a secretary for the Communist Party was a stroke of genius, helping to break up a spy ring. Knight’s M section was more right-wing, daring, more maverick than others. It was also the most independent, economical, and unconventional. Many spy stories are page-turners, but the author proves that the story of one man can be equally thrilling.
Hemming has uncovered a man determined not to be known and in so doing, has provided us with delightful reading.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61039-684-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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