A fast-paced, though often rigidly ideological, account of ``covert operations'' by a 40-year veteran of the intelligence battles of the cold war. Singlaub, who served with the legendary OSS in WW II and then with the early CIA, describes military and intelligence missions in Nazi-occupied France, and in China, Korea, Vietnam, and Nicaragua. Singlaub makes clear his own view of the significance of these missions—he was always a soldier, often playing a heroic role, in America's just war against ruthless Communist aggression. Singlaub appears to view geopolitical issues, even in the wake of glasnost and perestroika, in terms of a battle between the forces of darkness, led the Communist world, and the forces of light, led by America. Whether one accepts this view or not, Singlaub's account of intelligence operations—written with the help of novelist/journalist McConnell (Into the Mouth of the Cat, 1984, etc.)—make for fascinating reading, particularly his description of contacting French resistance leaders prior to D-Day, working on the Nationalist side during the Chinese Revolution, and managing the secret war along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The author demonstrates that, through four decades of service, his world view and his devotion to his duty as he sees it have remained constant. A firsthand perspective on America's long secret war against Communism, rendered by one of its primary combatants. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-70516-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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