Ballen admits that they cannot reveal the motivation of all Islamic radicals, but few readers will deny that they illuminate...
Those who still believe terrorists are mindless fanatics will find little evidence in these revealing, often touching interviews with six young Islamic men.
In despair when his lover was forced to marry another man, a young Arab enlisted in the Iraqi insurgency, found it tedious and returned home only to learn that she had run off to become a suicide bomber. She never returned. Another Saudi, an aimless dropout, galvanized by TV images of American guards humiliating Abu Ghraib prisoners (a priceless recruiting bonanza for terrorists), joined and became the first suicide bomber to survive his attack. Two subjects, one gay, both deeply religious, flirted with terrorism without signing up, but their stories cast a revealing light on an exotic, unfamiliar culture. Wildly cynical and boastful, a midlevel Pakistani terrorist drips contempt for America—by aiding Pakistan, we are financing and fighting terrorism simultaneously—but gives equal time to denouncing former comrades, Pakistani officers and even Taliban fighters and high officials for heartlessness, greed, corruption and an un-Islamic lack of humility. These stories clearly represent the cream of more than 100 interviews.
Ballen admits that they cannot reveal the motivation of all Islamic radicals, but few readers will deny that they illuminate the frustrations of young Islamic men living in repressive societies, alternatively fascinated and horrified by America.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0921-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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