Riveting and disturbing, if somewhat incomplete.
Investigative journalist Vincent (Hitler’s Silent Partners, 1997, etc.) uncovers a little-known slice of Jewish history.
Sophia Chamys was just 13 when her father, a struggling peasant in a Polish shtetl, arranged her marriage to a well-dressed stranger from Lódz. Or, at least, that’s what papa Chamys thought he was doing. But the marriage was a ruse: Sophia’s “husband” was, in fact, a wheeler-dealer in an international prostitution ring run by a group of Jewish gangsters known as Zwi Migdal. Their web of brothels stretched from Poland to New York to India, but the nerve center was in Buenos Aires. That was where Chamys ended up, locked in a whorehouse, despised and shunned by the more respectable members of the city’s Jewish community, which refused even to give the prostitutes proper burials. So the women themselves—largely illiterate, bitterly poor—banded together to form their own benevolent society: the Chesed Shel Ermess, or Society of Truth. At the forefront were Chamys and fellow prostitutes Rachel Liberman and Rebecca Freedman, who managed to get to a police station and leave a record of her life before she died of tuberculosis at 18. While the story is fascinating, this history would have been stronger if Vincent had made an argument or two, offered more analysis and availed herself of more of the scholarly literature on white slavery. Footnotes would also be welcome: the story of these prostitutes, after all, has long been buried (Jews in Buenos Aires reportedly avoid the subject still today), and citations documenting the awesome research surely required for Vincent to retell the tale would only add to the book’s popular appeal.
Riveting and disturbing, if somewhat incomplete.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-009023-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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