Significant historical acts and events are here put into unique perspective by a participant.
A posthumous Holocaust memoir from the youngest person on Oskar Schindler’s list.
Completed before his death in January 2013, Leyson’s narrative opens with glowing but not falsely idyllic childhood memories of growing up surrounded by friends and relatives in the Polish village of Narewka and then the less intimate but still, to him, marvelous city of Kraków. The Nazi occupation brought waves of persecution and forced removals to first a ghetto and then a labor camp—but since his father, a machinist, worked at the enamelware factory that Schindler opportunistically bought, 14-year-old “Leib” (who was so short he had to stand on the titular box to work), his mother and two of his four older siblings were eventually brought into the fold. Along with harrowing but not lurid accounts of extreme privation and casual brutality, the author recalls encounters with the quietly kind and heroic Schindler on the way to the war’s end, years spent at a displaced-persons facility in Germany and, at last, emigration to the United States. Leyson tacks just a quick sketch of his adult life and career onto the end and closes by explaining how he came to break his long silence about his experiences. Family photos (and a picture of the famous list with the author’s name highlighted) add further personal touches to this vivid, dramatic account.
Significant historical acts and events are here put into unique perspective by a participant. (Memoir. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-9781-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
An intriguing piece of scholarship, despite the unnecessary inventions (and lack of footnotes).
Shedding light on a truly obscure historical incident, a hybrid account of “the first, last, and only known fugitive slave to travel the tiny Puget Sound Underground Railroad.”
A single-passenger “Underground Railroad” isn’t the only reach here. Filling in a scanty documentary record with substantial amounts of invented dialogue (“I don’ wanna leave here. Why I gotta go?”), imputed actions and outright speculation, the authors present a double portrait: of James Tilton, surveyor general of Washington Territory, and of Charlie Mitchell, a mixed-race child in Tilton’s household who may well have been the Territory’s only enslaved person. Born on a failed Maryland plantation around 1847 and taken by Tilton as a favor to a relative, Mitchell arrived in Olympia in 1855—not so far from Victoria (a boomtown on the southern tip of Vancouver Island) and freedom. In 1860, he fled to Canada, sparked a kerfuffle recorded in court documents and newspaper articles, and then, aside from a few tantalizing census records, dropped from history. Along with a broad analysis of Tilton’s typically (for his class and times) paternalistic racial and political views, the authors fill in the blanks with details of his experiences as a soldier in the Mexican War and later (futile) attempts to run for office. They also include references to larger events, the area’s general history and its loose community of free African-Americans.
An intriguing piece of scholarship, despite the unnecessary inventions (and lack of footnotes). (afterword, bibliography) (Fiction/Nonfiction blend. 11-14)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-295-99271-6
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Univ. of Washington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
The melodrama is laid on with a trowel, but it’s nevertheless a thoroughly documented, visually rich presentation of the...
Aiming for a young audience, the popular political pundit pares down his Killing Kennedy (2012) considerably (and leaves out the sexual exploits) while shoveling in sheaves of documentary photographs.
O’Reilly writes in staccato bursts of present-tense prose chopped into short chapters and featuring quick shifts in point of view. This effectively cranks up the suspense despite tinges of purple (“The man with fewer than three years to live places his left hand on the Bible”) and the foreordained outcome. The book chronicles John F. Kennedy’s course from PT-109 through a challenging presidency and positively harps on Lee Harvey Oswald’s determined but doomed quest to become a “great man.” Though he ends with a personal anecdote that hints at the possibility of a conspiracy, the author’s closely detailed account of the assassination itself and its aftermath follows the Warren Commission’s version of events. News photos or snapshots on nearly every page provide views of the Kennedy and Oswald families over time, as well as important figures, places and major world events. Aside from a perfunctory list of “Fun Facts About the Early 1960s” that seems misplaced considering the somber topic, the backmatter is both extensive and helpful for further study of Kennedy’s career and accomplishments.
The melodrama is laid on with a trowel, but it’s nevertheless a thoroughly documented, visually rich presentation of the official version. (timeline, quotes, capsule bios, sites, books, films, source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9802-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
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