by Joseph Wheelan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2010
A true-adventure story that also documents how prisoner abuse and recriminations spurred the federal commitment to the...
The harrowing, little-known story of the 109 Union officers who escaped from a Richmond prison in 1864—an episode that deserves a higher place in Civil War lore.
Former AP reporter and editor Wheelan (Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress, 2008, etc.) fastidiously establishes the circumstances and conditions leading to the desperate actions of Union officers, held separately from enlisted men per conventions of the time, to break out of Libby Prison, a former vast tobacco warehouse on the Richmond riverfront. As the war moved through the fall of 1863, the Confederate economy was fast unraveling, with civilian privation the norm, particularly in cities. Yankee prisoners, even officers, were at the end of the line for the South's rapidly shrinking food supply. (Conditions were far better for Rebel captives held in the North—the author suggests that many were better fed and cared for than they had been in their own ranks.) An ornate system of parole and exchanges had prevailed at the war's outset, offering hope of a short internment for captives of both sides. But with the Emancipation Proclamation from a politically rejuvenated Lincoln, the South rejected leniency. They refused to parole captured black troops, often executing them on the battlefield, and they put white officers on trial for inciting slave revolt, a capital crime. As conditions worsened at Libby, two officers took the lead in finding an ingenious way to get into a cellar through their kitchen fireplace. The first tunnel was scraped with makeshift tools but descended too far and was flooded by a nearby canal. Three others were dug, amid hordes of rats, filth and sewage, before breakout was achieved in February 1864. Some were killed and recaptured, but 52 escapees made it back to Union lines, all with tales to tell.
A true-adventure story that also documents how prisoner abuse and recriminations spurred the federal commitment to the “total war” that ravaged the South.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58648-716-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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