French avant-garde novelist Le ClÇzio (The Giants, 1975, etc.) offers up a meditation and lamentation on Mesoamerican civilizations and the Spanish conquest. Le ClÇzio starts by summarizing two key documents on the fall of the Aztecs: The True Story of the Conquest of Mexico, by conquistador Bernal Diaz, and History of Ancient Mexico, by Catholic missionary Bernardino de Sahagun. Diaz's text reveals a clash of ``dreams,'' the Spanish dream of gold vs. the Mayan dream of bearded men in armor sent by Quetzalcoatl. The History, composed after Cortes and his tiny band had crushed the vast Mexican empire, presents the shared dream of its Christian author and the surviving Indians whom he interviewed: that this lost civilization be recovered or at least memorialized. Other dreams follow, such as those of the shamanistic ``barbarian'' (i.e., non-Aztec) Indian nations, who fiercely resisted the influx of Christianity. Four hundred years later, tormented French poet Antonin Artaud arrived in Mexico, chasing his own dream of a world reborn. Le ClÇzio superbly presents the Aztec worldview with its ``dancing, bloody sacrifices, hallucinations, dreams.'' In a statement typically hyperbolic, he counts the destruction of this world of ``mystical cruelty'' by ``modern weapons and rational thought'' as ``the greatest disaster in human history.'' The author concludes by suggesting that the Aztec world, if it had survived, might have ``integrated dream and ecstasy into daily life.'' Heated, hypnotic, bizarre: Mesoamerican history as if composed by an Aztec priest. (One halftone, one map)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-226-11002-8
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
A history of American spy versus American cop written in a manner as informative as any treatise and as entertaining as the...
A brilliant first book chronicling the bitter rivalry of the FBI and CIA from WW II, when the CIA had its roots in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), through the present.
Riebling, who has been an associate editor at Random House, combines outstanding research based on newly declassified documents with extensive interviews to provide an anecdotal and extremely well written account of the strife between the Agency and the Bureau. He offers a superlative presentation of the dramatis personae: FDR, Harry Truman, OSS Chief William "Wild Bill'' Donovan, J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, superspy James Jesus Angleton, and assorted supporting characters, including the present-day CIA embarrassment, Aldrich Ames. When the OSS and, later, the CIA were formed, FBI chief Hoover, the consummate bureaucratic turf warrior, was hardly a booster. He often refused to cooperate with the OSS, and the latter agency held the FBI in as much contempt. The competition between the two groups during the war was exacerbated by an old American social conflict: The OSS was comprised largely of Ivy League WASPs, while the FBI was dominated by less privileged Irish Catholics. One of the finest chapters of the book discusses how the FBI and CIA tried to protect their respective flanks in the wake of the Kennedy assassination—since the agencies had failed to share information about Lee Harvey Oswald. Riebling also details Angleton's obsessive search for a mole in the CIA and how that operation brought about more conflict with the FBI. In an epilogue, Riebling addresses various methods that the government might use to bring about a resolution of the FBI-CIA "problem.'' But he concludes that, in a republican government, the current discord might be preferable to a "superagency'' combining the purview of the two organizations.
A history of American spy versus American cop written in a manner as informative as any treatise and as entertaining as the best espionage novels.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-41471-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Rolling Stone's token Republican and the H.L. Mencken Fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute, O'Rourke (Give War a Chance, 1992, etc.) has written his most sustained and well-argued book yet. O'Rourke touts the glories of free minds and free markets as we currently enjoy them in the US, despite, in his view, the current administration's effort to undermine both. He systematically looks at the issues that supposedly dog our times, combining a glance at the scholarly literature (goofing on academic prose) with fieldwork (getting sauced on five continents). There's lots of typical O'Rourke yuks: the near-libelous name-calling; the international search for good booze and pretty women; and the admitted attacks of ``troglodyte dyspepsia.'' While earnest college kids hug trees and whine about being victims, the rest of the world, in O'Rourke's eye, is determined to get rich. In Bangladesh, he considers the nature of population growth; in Somalia, the course of famine; in the Amazon, the fate of the environment; in the former Yugoslavia, the consequences of multiculturalism; and the roots of poverty in Vietnam. What's behind it all? Politics, says O'Rourke. Often the left-wing sort. In O'Rourke's jaundiced view, the ``moral buttinskis'' of the world continually demonstrate their contempt for the most obvious solution: unfettered capitalism. And he details the wonders of Third World markets by visiting the bustling bazaars of Saigon. What better way to study foreign entrepreneurship than searching for the best bars and restaurants? Only the Somalis, with their intense hatred, really get him down, as do a number of mush-brained environmentalists he schmoozes with at the Earth Summit in Rio. The perfect antidote to revolutionary tourism, O'Rourke's raucous narrative suffers from one conceptual flaw: Like many right-wingers, he forgets that regulation, reform, and butting in led to so many of our current freedoms. (First printing of 150,000; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-87113-580-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
