Readers may have trouble choosing between this and Carole Angier’s The Double Bond (2002). Each has considerable merit, and...
A rich life of the enormously gifted but deeply troubled Italian Jewish writer.
Primo Levi’s suicide on April 11, 1987, at the age of 67, angered some of his fellow Holocaust survivors, writes English journalist Thomson (Bonjour Blanc, not reviewed, etc.), who were “incensed at the apparent uselessness of the act.” Others, however, well understood his decision to end his life, seeing in it one of the few acts of unbridled freedom in a carefully controlled and luckless life. Levi grew up in a comfortable Turin household where emotions were not easily expressed; “in later years,” Thomson writes, “Levi told a journalist that he could not remember ‘a single kiss or caress’ from his mother.” Whether or not that was true—and Thomson doubts that it is—Levi grew up to be a morose young man whose hopes of becoming a writer were dashed by the indifference of publishers (among the editors who rejected him were the writers Cesare Pavese and Natalia Ginzburg, the latter of whom later regretted her decision) and of a public that wanted to forget the historical realities that underlay Levi’s extraordinary memoirs. Those were, of course, the mass deportation of Italian Jews, along with Jews from everywhere in Europe, to Auschwitz and other death camps, the setting for Levi’s If This Is a Man and the allegorical Periodic Table, among others. These works are now part of the canon of Holocaust literature, even if Levi was uncomfortable as a spokesman and determined not to serve as “a symbolic rallying point for other people’s suffering.” In this sympathetic consideration of Levi’s life, Thomson well fulfills his pledge, at the outset, to write a biography “not found in his books”—no easy task, given that much of Levi’s output is an extended autobiography, but aided by Thomson’s diligence in seeking out and interviewing those who knew the author.
Readers may have trouble choosing between this and Carole Angier’s The Double Bond (2002). Each has considerable merit, and admirers of Levi will want to know both.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2003
ISBN: 0-8050-7343-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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