by Kathryn Barbour ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A poignant reminder of the Jonestown madness and the lives it destroyed.
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The victims of one of the most bizarre tragedies in American history, the mass suicide of 909 members of the San Francisco–based People’s Temple Christian Church in their jungle compound, are memorialized in this haunting photo album.
The People’s Temple preached a strange mixture of Pentecostal Christianity, doctrinaire communism, and messianic worship of the charismatic Rev. Jim Jones, who was a politically influential civil rights and anti-poverty activist even as he exercised a secretive, paranoid, and abusive control over his flock. Negative press reports sent him into voluntary exile at the Temple’s “Jonestown” plantation in Guyana, where he subjected his followers to Soviet propaganda films and rambling monologues on the conspiracies he thought were targeting them. After Jones’ “Red Brigade” security guards killed Congressman Leo Ryan and four other members of a delegation that arrived to investigate Jonestown, Jones ordered his followers, including nearly 300 children, to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid drinks. (A chillingly calm “death tape” recorded Jones and other Temple stalwarts exhorting parents to poison their kids—and parents applauding the speeches.) Barbour, who knew some of the victims before they went to Guyana, gives few details of these events in her slender commemorative volume, focusing instead on simply naming the dead and presenting their portraits, mostly taken from passport photos. The roster ranges from 2-month-old Charles Henderson to 97-year-old Ever Rejoicing and includes Jones and other perpetrators along with innocents. Ironically, given Jones’ fulminations against racism and sexism, the victims were mostly African-American and many were female. Barbour intends the book mainly as a historical document and an aid to families (she includes forms for readers to contact her about misidentifications), but in these artless photos, the victims’ humanity—smiling, hopeful, unguarded—shines through. She adds no commentary or editorializing, but the mere alphabetical arrangement, of, say, the Baisy family—mother Shirley and six kids—conveys the loss with heartbreaking eloquence.
A poignant reminder of the Jonestown madness and the lives it destroyed.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-692-32813-2
Page Count: 102
Publisher: KatBard Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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