A harrowing survival story.
An American journalist’s account of 44 days in a Taliban prison.
Van Dyk, a freelancer for CBS News and the New York Times, wrote years ago about his travels with the mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan (In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey, 1983). In 2008, he began a dangerous trip into Pakistani tribal areas occupied by the Taliban, hoping to chronicle life along the rugged Afghan/Pakistani border, a center of Taliban and al-Qaeda activity. Working on his own, Van Dyk disguised himself as a pious Muslim and a member of the Pashtun tribe prevalent in the region. He had just entered Pakistan when a group of Taliban kidnapped him and his Afghan guides. The author’s memoir reveals his constant fear and uncertainty during weeks of captivity in a Taliban safe house. When Van Dyk admitted he was an American, his captors treated him hospitably—as dictated by their tribal code—but nonetheless badgered and toyed with him psychologically, convinced he was a spy. Between interrogations, his jailers described differing plans. They would negotiate an exchange of Van Dyk for three inmates at Guantánamo; they would free him for a ransom of $1.5 million, or $1 million, or some amount, to be raised by his family and friends. At the same time, they stressed that preparing for Paradise was all that mattered, and insisted that he draw closer to Islam through prayer and reading. With the occasional Predator unmanned aircraft passing overhead, he talked with his captors about the role of women in Islam, the training of suicide bombers, and other relevant topics; studied the Pashtun language; fantasized about escaping; and slept more and more. Van Dyk’s staccato style keeps the narrative moving. Finally, he was taken back into Afghanistan and freed, the Taliban having presumably received a $200,000 ransom. “We will be watching you,” they warned. Later, at a U.S. military base, looking like a Taliban member with his long beard, Van Dyk found that soldiers were wary of him. He says he still did not know who was responsible for his kidnapping, whether a ransom was actually paid and, if so, by whom.
A harrowing survival story.Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8827-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A clear, useful guide through the current chaotic political landscape.
A sharp explanation of how American politics has become so discordant.
Journalist Klein, co-founder of Vox, formerly of the Washington Post, MSNBC, and Bloomberg, reminds readers that political commentators in the 1950s and ’60s denounced Republicans and Democrats as “tweedledum and tweedledee.” With liberals and conservatives in both parties, they complained, voters lacked a true choice. The author suspects that race played a role, and he capably shows us why and how. For a century after the Civil War, former Confederate states, obsessed with keeping blacks powerless, elected a congressional bloc that “kept the Democratic party less liberal than it otherwise would’ve been, the Republican Party congressionally weaker than it otherwise would’ve been, and stopped the parties from sorting themselves around the deepest political cleavage of the age.” Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, many white Southern Democrats became Republicans, and the parties turned consistently liberal and conservative. Given a “true choice,” Klein maintains, voters discarded ideology in favor of “identity politics.” Americans, like all humans, cherish their “tribe” and distrust outsiders. Identity was once a preoccupation of minorities, but it has recently attracted white activists and poisoned the national discourse. The author deplores the decline of mass media (network TV, daily newspapers), which could not offend a large audience, and the rise of niche media and internet sites, which tell a small audience only what they want to hear. American observers often joke about European nations that have many parties who vote in lock step. In fact, such parties cooperate to pass legislation. America is the sole system with only two parties, both of which are convinced that the other is not only incompetent (a traditional accusation), but a danger to the nation. So far, calls for drastic action to prevent the apocalypse are confined to social media, fringe activists, and the rhetoric of Trump supporters. Fortunately—according to Klein—Trump is lazy, but future presidents may be more savvy. The author does not conclude this deeply insightful, if dispiriting, analysis by proposing a solution.
A clear, useful guide through the current chaotic political landscape.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0032-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The collected "pieces" of the author of Go Tell It on the Mountain form a compelling unit as he applies the high drama of poetry and sociology to a penetrating analysis of the Negro experience on the American and European scene.
He bares the brutal boners of "everybody's protest novel" from Stowe to Wright; points out that black is "devil-color" according to Christian theology and to "make white" is thus to save; reveals the positive base of Carmen Jones, movie version, as Negroes are white, that is, moral. Beyond such artistic attitudinal displays lie experimental realities: the Harlem Ghetto with its Negro press, the positive element of which tries to emulate the white press and provides an incongruous mixture of slick style and stark subject; the Ghetto with its churches and its hatred of the American reality behind the Jewish face (from which, as sufferers, so much was expected). There is a trip to Atlanta for the Wallace campaign and indignities endured; there is a beautiful essay, from which the book takes its title- of father and son and the corroding power of hate as it could grow from injustice. In Europe, there is the encounter of African and American Negro; a sojourn in jail over a stolen sheet; and last, the poignant essay of the first Negro to come to a remote Swiss village, to be greeted as a living wonder. This is not true in America, where he has a place, though equivocal, in our united life.
The expression of so many insights enriches rather than clarifies, and behind every page stalks a man, an everyman, seeking his identity...and ours. Exceptional writing.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1955
ISBN: 0807064319
Page Count: -
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1955
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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