A haunting memoir and tribute to an extraordinary comrade-at-arms.
Intensely vivid story of war and the peculiar breed of warriors who fight it in 21st-century Africa.
An award-winning filmmaker and frontline war reporter, Brabazon cut his teeth in the Liberian rainforest, marching hundreds of miles with the rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, who were seeking to overthrow the despotic Charles Taylor in February 2002. Before the author’s reports for the BBC radio, the existence of LURD was just a rumor. But for the company of a seasoned South African military man and adventurer named Nick du Toit, it might have been up to another intrepid journalist to get the scoop. The green Brabazon might not have survived even the dysentery that laid him low a few days into the journey, let alone gunfire or worse during bloody skirmishes with Taylor’s troops, if not for du Toit’s experienced hand nearby. Their bond survived the horrors of Liberia’s civil war on that trip and others, despite the author’s suspicions (and friends’ warnings) about du Toit’s history with the apartheid-era Special Forces and his new careers as arms dealer and soldier of fortune. The man the author knew seemed gentle and humane, as well as fearless. Brabazon’s respect for du Toit led him to seriously consider his invitation to film a coup he and “business partners” were plotting against another despot, Teodoro Obiango of Equatorial Guinea. Ironically, a family tragedy saved the author from his friend’s fate: capture by Obiango and horrific torture at the hands of his security forces in the notorious Black Beach prison, where Obiango had begun his career in brutality. The book opens with stomach-churning accounts of the torture that du Toit and his co-conspirators suffered, based partly on videos the torturers made. Brabazon himself was unflinching as a documentarian of war, and his prose is no less sparing, whether describing the gruesome reality of guerrilla combat or the agonizing moral quandaries of battle. The first two-thirds of the book offer as thrilling a narrative as any war novel on the shelves, and the finale is as clear a picture of the murky world of postcolonial Africa as the readers are likely to get.
A haunting memoir and tribute to an extraordinary comrade-at-arms.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1975-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A delightful excursion through the history, politics, and culture of the Eternal City, showing the continuity between Rome's turbulent history and its equally intriguing present. The glories and savageries of ancient republican and imperial Rome permeate journalist Sheridan's account: Reminders of Rome's ancient past are everywhere as Sheridan shows the influence of the symbolism and history of the Roman state on the universal Church and even on Mussolini's Italy. Sheridan deftly traces the history of the Latin language and literature from the ancient past until modern times, as it served as the Catholic Church's lingua franca until the 1960s. Sheridan writes not only of the native Romans, but of foreigners who, like himself, were attached in some way to the ancient city: Edward Gibbon, who conceived his great history amid the ruins of the Forum, and the Shelleys, who romanticized Rome until their young son died there of an illness exacerbated by the climate. Sheridan draws an arresting portrait of the complex Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, whose specious rise and tragic fall paralleled that of Fascist Italy. The author also devotes two chapters to the Catholic Church, providing a snapshot of the church during the sea change of Vatican II and following its progress through the increasingly conservative reigns of Paul VI and John Paul II. Finally, Sheridan discusses the scandal-ridden turmoil of current Italian politics. Tracing the fabled inefficiencies, corruption, and surprising stability of the modern Italian state to ancient Rome, Sheridan muses that ``its success depended upon the mechanism elaborated by Cicero and savaged by Juvenal: that is, the relationship between patron and client, the reciprocal use of favor, the courteous mutual understanding that oils every transaction.'' A pleasant journey through the past and present of Europe's greatest urbs.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13158-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining and affecting story of a remarkable American Indian family. Starita, a longtime reporter for the Miami Herald, combines oral history with his own reporting and research to chronicle one Lakota family's history from the early 19th century to the present. The Dull Knifes are warriors. At the center of this book is Guy Dull Knife Sr. Now 96 and in a nursing home, he remembers the horrors of being mustard-gassed during WW I and then returning home, having fought for a country that didn't consider him a citizen. Starita also tells of the first Dull Knife, who fought with Crazy Horse against the US Army in the 1860s. Signing the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the chief promised never to `` `sharpen his knife' against the whites,'' a promise he kept, refusing to join the fight at Little Bighorn. Sent to Indian Territory (current-day Oklahoma), his people found conditions unbearable, and in 1878, harassed by the US Army, Dull Knife led his people on a desperate 600-mile trek back to their homelands in the mountains of Wyoming and Montana. His son, George Dull Knife, after witnessing the carnage of Wounded Knee in 1890, went on to tour with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Guy Jr. played cowboys and Indians in the 1950s—when even Indian boys wanted to be John Wayne. He was drafted in 1968 and fought for real in Vietnam. Like many Indians, he was forced to walk ``point'' at the head of columns; the highly vulnerable position was assigned to Native Americans because of their supposed skill as hunters and trackers. Still struggling with his war experience 25 years later, Guy is now an accomplished artist. Both Guy Sr. and Jr. participated in the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973, a 71-day crisis after which Indians won the right to reopen the treaty of 1868. (For a history of another Lakota family, see Leonard Crow Dog's Crow Dog, p. 285.) Starita tells the Dull Knifes' story in remarkable and affectionate detail, maintaining a balance between the history of a people and the history of a family. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club/History Book Club selections)
Pub Date: April 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14010-7
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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