Too devoted to the conventions of travelogues past, but offers an unexpectedly enlightening introduction to an unfairly...
After quitting his job, open-minded author Maslin loaded a backpack and hitched to Iran, where he spent nine weeks debunking Western misconceptions.
Travel narratives often conclude that preconceived notions about exotic lands are often absurdly erroneous, a grand tradition that Maslin’s debut enthusiastically perpetuates. Unsatisfied with life in a cubicle, the author decided to take a sojourn to Iran, despite warnings and admonitions from friends who, under the influence of Western media, denigrate the country as little more than a safe haven for terrorists. Casting aside those prejudices upon entering the country, he quickly discovered that, rather than being hated, he received the royal treatment from nearly everyone he met. So enthusiastically welcoming were the residents, in fact, that they generously purchased food and drinks, offered their beds and provided recommendations for and transportation to places of historical interest. The unexpectedly universal hospitality was accompanied by widespread disdain among the people for politicians ranging from the former ruling Shah and current President Ahmadinejad to George Bush and Tony Blair. Conversely, Irish pop singer Chris de Burgh, one of the only non-Iranian artists sanctioned by the government, is revered. Maslin provides a balanced blend of social commentary—including discussions of the role the United States and Britain played in manipulating the Iranian government, and younger Iranians’ fascination with Western culture, including rap music and pornography—and travel guidance, including notes on various bazaars, historical sights and churches). Occasionally the author’s good-natured attempts at humor veer off track and transform his well-meaning hosts into stereotypically crazy foreign caricatures worthy of Sacha Baron Cohen.
Too devoted to the conventions of travelogues past, but offers an unexpectedly enlightening introduction to an unfairly misunderstood country and culture.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60239-791-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The annual Halloween Parade in New York City's Greenwich Village might be the closest thing to Carnival north of New Orleans. It's a wild rumpus, where inhibitions flee and true selves come out of the closet. In the Village, traditional Halloween ghoulishness mixes with drag-queen fabulousness and quite a bit of rough-trade leather and exposed (often pierced) body parts. Anthropologist Kugelmass (From a Ruined Garden, 1983) calls it ``a metaphor for the peculiar combination of chaos and creativity that characterizes daily life in New York City.'' Kugelmass has combined interviews of participants and spectators with full-color photographs of the parade taken by Mariette Pathy Allen, Elijah Cobb, Harold Davis, Lauren Piperno, and Marilyn Stern. The photos, all taken at night, capture the pagan abandon of the parade.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1994
ISBN: 0-231-08400-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
Nation Washington editor Corn delves thoroughly and with gusto into the career of Ted Shackley, one of the more shadowy CIA agents of the Cold War period. Shackley was the child of a broken home, son of an immigrant woman who bequeathed him his fluent Polish, a skill that landed him his first counterintelligence job in postwar Berlin. An intense but informed and intelligent patriot, he entered the CIA at its inception in 1947. His career, therefore, mirrors the development and fortunes of the agency itself. Shackley was in Miami to orchestrate assassination attempts on Castro; he was in Laos to organize the covert war against the Pathet Lao; he was in Vietnam, where, from his office in the Saigon embassy as chief of the East Asia Division, he earned the nickname ``Blond Ghost.'' (In 1975, back in the States, as he watched TV images of the embassy evacuation, his 11-year-old daughter found him weeping—a rare moment of emotion for a man portrayed here as cold, balanced, and ruthless.) Corn sounds a note of recrimination throughout this biography, which somewhat unfairly lays at Shackley's door such fiascos as the posting by an agency employee of a CIA-forged letter from a Thai Communist rebel to the Thai government in an attempt to foster divisions within that country's left (it was traced back to the CIA and caused a storm of anti-American protest in Thailand). The book might have benefited from the perspective of Shackley himself, who did not consent to be interviewed. By his own admission, Corn has used Shackley's career to open a window into the world of intelligence, and his book succeeds more as an account of the CIA's workings in general than as a portrait of one agent. A fairly absorbing read about the CIA, though the special significance of its protagonist isn't really established.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-69525-8
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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