A reticent but still revealing memoir by the man who was in overall charge not only of the development of the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the spy satellite program, but also of the Bay of Pigs. Bissell was one of the best of that remarkable group of public servants that emerged during and immediately after the Second World War. In 1954, shortly after joining the CIA, he was given responsibility for the U-2, and only 20 months elapsed before its first overflight of the Soviet Union. Eisenhower insisted on approving each and every flight, and though Bissell blames himself for recommending the mission of Francis Gary Powers, who was shot down just before the summit with Khrushchev, it is clear that the program gave the US invaluable insight into Soviet capabilities, which were considerably less than the public feared. That knowledge, Bissell contends, enabled Eisenhower to be calm in periods of great international tension and also to resist efforts to build more expensive weapons systems. It later completely discredited the notion of the ``missile gap.'' By contrast, even Bissell is not sure that the Cuban Brigade could have succeeded in overthrowing Castro, but he is certain that the effect of Kennedy's decision to change its objective away from an area where defections were possible and guerrilla operations more feasible, and then to reduce the air strikes by 80 percent (so that Castro's air force of four or five aircraft survived) doomed the enterprise. Again Bissell blames himself for not recommending cancellation of the invasion when it should have become clear that it could not succeed. This is not a book of moral anguish or the telling personal detail. But as the record of an honorable and effective public servant in dangerous times, it is wise and worthwhile.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-300-06430-6
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
