No thoughtful reader of this book will look at his or her computer or cellphone the same way again.
Eye-opening reportage from an African nation that has been robbed and despoiled for centuries—but that is now finding paths of resistance.
Human-rights activists Prendergast (co-author: The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa's Worst Human Rights Crimes, 2010, etc.) and Bafilemba, the latter a Congolese field researcher, begin with the story of a woman who was abducted by a local militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, held captive for 15 months, and repeatedly raped as “the wife of everyone.” She managed to escape, only to be brutalized again by invading Rwandan soldiers, and finally became a teacher and mentor “to countless Congolese women who have experienced physical and emotional trauma.” Hers is a story that has been repeated again and again for centuries as Congolese rulers, for a price, have allowed outside powers to loot its resources, by which the nation should rightfully be one of the richest in the world. Instead, in recent history, it has been ruled by kleptocrats—currently Joseph Kabila, who “has subverted democratic processes and violently repressed independent and opposition voices in order to retain power indefinitely”—even as those outside interests remove astonishing quantities of what the authors enumerate as four “conflict minerals.” These include tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold, as well as cobalt and diamonds, all things that enrich the developed world and make many of its modern technologies possible. Change is possible: The authors hold that Congo offers a case study not just in inequality and postcolonial exploitation but also in what can be done about them, including being sure that jewelers source their supplies responsibly and use “conflict-free artisanal gold from Congo in their jewelry lines.” Gosling provides excellent images of daily life in Congo, while, in a postscript, Dave Eggers urges readers to find ways to support small-scale “local projects conceived and run by local residents,” funding the people who most need help.
No thoughtful reader of this book will look at his or her computer or cellphone the same way again.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4555-8464-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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
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
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