by Irris Makler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 25, 2014
Makler’s memoir offers a close-up view of life in a volatile region and the pressures and risks of her daring profession.
The perils and pleasures of daily life in Israel.
In 2002, freelance journalist Makler (Our Woman in Kabul, 2003), “always chasing work,” moved from Moscow to Jerusalem. Palestine’s Second Intifada was inciting violent unrest, with suicide attacks and bombings occurring daily. “The city was literally exploding,” Makler writes. “Israeli media was fizzing.” At the urging of a friend, a BBC foreign correspondent, the author decided to stay in Israel. Within a few months, besides constant reporting, she fell in love with a young musician and actor, and the couple adopted an endearing, energetic dog, Mia. Throughout the narrative, Makler weaves the personal and political: tense border crossings and shopping at IKEA; observing political negotiations and negotiating her relationship with her boyfriend; chasing suicide bombings and chasing Mia. Besides lengthy recountings of Mia’s antics and adventures, Makler portrays a reality of living with constant threats—e.g., a friend out buying pizza was one store away from a devastating bombing in a cafe; if he had gone in for coffee, he would have been blown up. Makler herself was hit during a stone-throwing rampage; her jaw was broken, but if she had turned a fraction of an inch, she would have been blinded or killed. She was always on call, always ready to travel. In the summer of 2005, for example, she took a long, arduous trip to the desert to report on Israel’s fraught withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, an action passionately resisted by some settlers who insisted they would leave only by force. After soldiers calmly completed the evacuation, they complied with Palestinian demands to raze the town, and Makler witnessed the bulldozing of every building, including synagogues. “It was a strange, painful sight,” she writes, “given Jewish history in Europe, to watch Jews destroying synagogues” and unearthing Jewish graves.
Makler’s memoir offers a close-up view of life in a volatile region and the pressures and risks of her daring profession.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7322-9416-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper360
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Share your opinion of this book
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.