Like most books on the CIA and other covert organizations, this one has been rigorously edited to avoid revealing sensitive...
Acerbic memoir of a truncated career at the CIA.
While he was pursuing a masters’ degree at George Washington University, a knowledgeable professor steered Kiriakou toward “the Company.” He joined the CIA in 1990 as a “leadership analyst” in the Directorate of Intelligence. After a few years he transferred into the Directorate of Operations, which necessitated a hair-raising training course at “the Farm.” Along the way, his marriage dissolved, resulting in many unpleasant disputes over the custody of his children. As the author notes, the trickiest part of being an operative is not the weapons training, nor the cloak-and-dagger tricks, but the subtle qualities that allow them to recruit and “run” agents in other countries. Kiriakou spent the first part of his clandestine career in Greece, where the radical group 17 November was still occasionally committing assassinations. He then became involved in training “officials and military officers of certain foreign countries in counterterror operations,” working at Langley. The author recounts a chilling anecdote from June 2001, when agency counterterrorism leader Cofer Black implored a visiting group of Middle Eastern military men, asking, “If you have any sources inside al-Qaeda, please work them now because whatever it is, we have to do everything we can to stop it.” Following 9/11, writes the author, many Agency personnel were clamoring for posts overseas. Due to his training in Arabic, he was sent to oversee counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan. He writes in detail about one of his crucial operations, the capture of notorious al-Qaeda chief Abu Zubaydah. Later he was given the opportunity to participate in the “enhanced interrogation” program, under which Zubaydah and many others were waterboarded. The author declined, and he writes forcefully that the United States must always avoid torture, no matter how demanding the circumstances.
Like most books on the CIA and other covert organizations, this one has been rigorously edited to avoid revealing sensitive details. But Kiriakou offers an original, boots-on-the-ground perspective on the war on terror.Pub Date: March 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-553-80737-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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