An important record of the incremental steps one journalist took against sexual violence in Mexico.
A Mexican journalist bravely sets precedent in the highest court in targeting corruption and influence pedaling.
Many journalists in Mexico have been targeted for assassination, and many more have colluded with the corrupt Mafia rings that buy them off so they will water down the news rather than give the hard-hitting truth. Couragoeus El Universal journalist Cacho (Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking, 2014, etc.) famously took on the pedophile and child-pornography ring of Jean Succar Kuri and all those in power protecting him (including judges from the highest court and the governor of Puebla) and got the criminal jailed for good in 2011. However, the toll on her journalistic integrity nearly broke her, as she recounts in this detailed look at the Kuri pedophilia case that began in 2003, when one of the young victims first appealed to Cacho, an editor and director of a women’s care center, for help. Her investigations led to a damning book, Demons of Eden (2005), based on much videotaping and interviews that Kuri himself made about having sex with girls as young as 5. However, in a horrific incidence of kidnapping, Cacho was actually arrested and taken to Puebla, where she was charged with defamation, all at the irate behest of the state’s governor, Mario Marín. As the case unraveled and Cacho scrambled to find a team to defend her, the miscarriage of justice routinely taking place within Mexico’s criminal justice system was stunning, stemming from the exorbitant power that Mexico’s governors exercise through what Cacho calls “metaconstitutional mechanisms.” The author received frequent death threats and had to hire her own security detail, but the combined resolve she inherited from her fiery family and the determination to avenge the abused children led her on a remarkable, solitary crusade for justice.
An important record of the incremental steps one journalist took against sexual violence in Mexico.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59376-643-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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