A wrenching reminder that human injustice repeats in the dark corners of human history—and a call to remain attentive.
A notorious chapter in Irish history still holds the power to shock in this resurfacing of women entangled in a repressive social system.
Brangan, an Irish academic, recounts a shameful history with the urgency of personal confession: the terrifying abuse of women in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries. An unofficial yet normalized carceral system, when the final laundry’s gates clanged shut in 1996, general public sentiment held that a sad chapter had finished, case closed. But for the thousands who had been forced into servitude—some spending a lifetime in laundries, exiting only to unmarked graves—the story had no neat endpoint. Sifting through archival records of victim accounts and interviews with survivors, Brangan plumbs the deep sorrow of lives lost to repression, clothed in the guise of religious charity. With few official public services in the 1920s, girls and women were compelled to enter after having a child outside of marriage, having parents unable to feed another mouth, or even after being accused of being too unconventional or uncontrollable—violations of conservative Catholic mores. In laundries, so-called industrial schools, and mother and child homes, some connected to convents, women lived and performed years of unpaid work. Washing clothing, scrubbing floors, and following religious routines overseen by nuns, they were removed from public view, as families and neighbors stayed silent. As Brangan notes, collusion and collective silencing of women were woven into the social system: “The courts, police, social workers, priests, and parents sent women and girls there, and they sent their laundry in after them.” Brangam uses evocative photos and previously unknown victims’ accounts to document the reality of their suffering, concluding, “If there were really any fallen people back then, it was not them—the women and girls—but the proverbial us.”
A wrenching reminder that human injustice repeats in the dark corners of human history—and a call to remain attentive.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781668079744
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.
An epistolary memoir of Nelson Mandela’s prison years.
From August 1962 to February 1990, Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned by the apartheid state of South Africa. During his more than 27 years in prison, the bulk of which he served on the notorious Robben Island prison off the shores of Cape Town, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, lawyers and fellow African National Congress members, prison officials, and members of the government. Heavily censored for both content and length, letters from Robben Island and South Africa’s other political prisons did not always reach their intended targets; when they did, the censorship could make them virtually unintelligible. To assemble this vitally important collection, Venter (A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's Notebook from Robben Island, 2006, etc.), a longtime Johannesburg-based editor and journalist, pored through these letters in various public and private archives across South Africa and beyond as well as Mandela’s own notebooks, in which he transcribed versions of these letters. The result is a necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC’s struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC’s rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not only—or even primarily—for himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book’s various sections.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-117-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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