Readers who have been waiting for Tucker Max to travel more fully will be thrilled to discover Maslin’s antics, which will...
An ambitious, uneven account of hitchhiking across three continents, from a smart but surprisingly immature British travel writer.
Beginning on the island of Tasmania in Southern Australia, Maslin (Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A Couchsurfer's Memoir of Venezuela, 2011, etc.) set out to travel home to London relying entirely on free rides from strangers. The author spends just as much time describing the characters he met—with their strange customs and languages—as on painting a full picture of the places he visited. After recounting a ride that delivered him “into the Indonesian equivalent of the Sopranos,” Maslin devotes an entire chapter to describing what he sees as key in understanding modern Indonesia: “the bloody legacy of the country’s former dictator…and the role Western governments…played in his rise to power.” The author’s use of footnotes helps him expand on and support his opinionated political views and well-researched accounts of history, which give context to his personal experiences. He also employs footnotes less seriously—e.g., when a Thai man asked about the size of a certain body part of Maslin’s, his response, “Erm, sufficient,” is accompanied by this footnote: “Remember that British understatement a moment ago?” The author’s boyish humor and privilege can come across less than favorably, such as when he throws a “petulant” fit at a local tour operator or the ways in which he refers to women—e.g., a language confusion in China resulted in “a rather worn-looking middle-aged woman in high heels…classic mutton dressed as lamb” appearing at his hotel room door.
Readers who have been waiting for Tucker Max to travel more fully will be thrilled to discover Maslin’s antics, which will likely turn off some readers. However, those charmed by the author’s guile and those who choose to push past their annoyance will be rewarded with an honest and gripping travel narrative.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1620878316
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Schulze’s courageous story fills a major gap in the story of the world’s greatest conflict, and she deserves a wide audience...
This compelling memoir of a German girl’s bitter, frightening life reveals the horrors visited upon an average family caught between two of the most cruel dictators in history.
Amidst the copious histories of Hitler and Stalin, historians have often neglected the horrific tales of innocent girls like Schulze, who early in World War II survived Nazi occupation, then was forced to hide in a secret attic for months at war’s end to escape sexual attacks from the invading rampages of the Russians. The Russian soldiers pillaged her tiny village of Doelitz, where women scrubbed their faces with ashes and dirt to make themselves unappealing to the Red Army’s serial rapists. With professional writer Collier’s help, Schulze tells a ground-level story that is at once haunting and shocking in its narration of ordinary, peaceful lives shattered forever by war. The small, poignant touches are riveting–the family’s favorite horse being dragged away to haul artillery; their argument about whether to follow Nazi orders to display Hitler’s portrait. Her inspiring story concludes with the long, harrowing struggle to escape to West Germany, followed by a months-long wait for a berth on a ship bound for America. Her first tastes of ice cream and pineapple aboard the ship are a fitting climax to a tale of never-ending stress and fear–and ultimately, redemption.
Schulze’s courageous story fills a major gap in the story of the world’s greatest conflict, and she deserves a wide audience of all ages.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-58348-072-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A daunting but worthwhile journey through the material and divine realms of our universe.
An intriguing if sometimes ponderous examination of man's place in the universe.
Bartow creates a systematic philosophic framework for integrating concepts from diverse disciplines, such as astrology, psychology, metaphysics, theology, eastern and western mysticism and quantum physics. The author uses complex–and often unintelligible–diagrams to create a visual representation of the corporeal and spiritual universe, building layers of complexity that illustrate the dynamic interaction of mind, matter, energy and spirituality. He divides man’s perception of the universe into objective and subjective categories with distinctive subcategories, using piano keys as the primary metaphor–the black keys represent the objective planes, embodied in the concrete laws of science, and the white keys represent the subjective interior planes. The author makes frequent use of the philosophies from such ancient traditions as the Kabbalah, Buddhism, the teachings of Don Juan and Tibetan thought. The massive scope of Bartow’s vision eventually becomes overwhelming, and the esoteric nature of the study will deter casual readers. Ultimately, however, the text will prove thought-provoking and rewarding for the diligent.
A daunting but worthwhile journey through the material and divine realms of our universe.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9760863-0-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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