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TIGER IN THE BARBED WIRE

Name: TIGER IN THE BARBED WIRE
Author: Howard R. Simpson
ISBN: 0-02-881008-2

AN AMERICAN IN VIETNAM, 1952-1991

by Howard R. Simpson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 1992

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Memoir of Vietnam by the author of A Very Large Consulate (1988) and other novels, including one about the French war against the Vietnamese (To a Silent Valley, 1961). Well over half of Simpson's book concerns his tenure as press officer for the US Foreign Service in Saigon, 1952-55. Simpson got along well with the French, and the set-pieces here are his accounts of the battle of Dien Bien Phu and the vital engagement at Nasan that prefigured that great turning point. Particularly affecting are the desperate hopes of the French commanders and their Algerian/Moroccan/Legionnaire troops as the battle goes badly and they beg, in vain, for American air support. There are shades of Graham Greene's The Quiet American in Simpson's depictions of the dying French empire and the brash but naive American opportunism; and the portraits of the eternally patient General Giap and of the corrupt Diem regime are painstakingly informed, not only from Simpson's personal observations but also from declassified accounts. The chronicle ends with Simpson's 1991 return, as a correspondent, to Hanoi and Saigon, where he visits the set of the French-made film Dien Bien Phu, in which he is a character. He meets with General Giap, who muses on the inevitability of his peasant army's victory. But mostly what Giap and others want, Simpson explains, is for the American trade embargo to be lifted and for Vietnam's economy to achieve its considerable potential. The embargo, says Simpson, has lost every rationale and is now simply ``vindictive.'' Particularly engaging as a chronicle of French defeat and, despite all best advice, the taking up of the doomed struggle by the US.

Pub Date: May 31, 1992

ISBN: 0-02-881008-2

Page Count: 259

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MADELINE'S SEASONS
developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
LOVE FROM MADELINE
by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
LA BONNE TABLE
by Ludwig Bemelmans

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)