Schneer (History/Georgia Tech Univ.; The Thames, 2005, etc.) examines the divide-and-conquer politics of the colonial powers as they were brought to bear on 20th-century Palestine.
On the surface, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was well intentioned. Named for its “odd protagonist,” British diplomat and government official A.J. Balfour (1848-1930), it afforded a sympathetic vehicle to Zionist aspirations for a homeland in the old Holy Land. In a time of widespread anti-Semitism, Balfour paid heed to Zionist pioneer Chaim Weizmann and his insistence that European Jews had contributed immeasurably to the ascendant cultures of Germany and France. Others within the British government were unenthusiastic at the prospect of a Jewish return to Palestine, with Lloyd George, by one fly-on-the-wall account, caring not a whit for the Jews in question but taking a strong view that without them, all of the Holy Land might “pass into the possession or under the protectorate of ‘Agnostic Atheist France.’!” French aspirations in Syria and Lebanon entered into the picture, as did the disposition of the doddering Ottoman Empire, which crumbled with Turkey's defeat in World War I. Schneer offers a portrait of events that are confusing at best, and that have many origins, whether in British designs to contain those French aspirations, to temper—and here his account is timely—the rising mood of jihad among Muslims living in British colonies, and to limit the growth of the Russian Empire to the north. To a large extent, the author writes, the Zionists and the Arabs whose land would be in play were unaware of those larger imperial games; “neither party,” he writes, “understood that they were in a race at all, and both parties incorrectly identified their adversary.” The result, which Schneer examines in an overworked metaphor, was the sowing of dragon's teeth that yield fierce monsters to this day. A complex-enough tale that the lengthy dramatis personae that opens the book is not a feature but a necessity.
Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6532-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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