An urgent, fiery reconstruction of a tragic moment in the history of Atlanta, a moment when the combustible mix of black oppression, Jewish liberalism, and white anxiety finally blew up in an otherwise peaceful city. During the night of Oct. 12, 1958, 50 sticks of dynamite exploded under the august old Reform synagogue known simply as the Temple. It was a warning to Jacob Rothschild, the Temple's outspoken rabbi. Greene, author of the highly acclaimed Praying for Sheetrock (1991), unequivocally crowns Rothschild a hero. But he's very much a modern hero—a regular guy, a rabbi with no particular spiritual gift, who found greatness when, arriving in Atlanta in 1946, he first met Jim Crow. In sermon after sermon he harangued his congregants to fulfill the prophetic call for justice by supporting integration. Rothschild was heard with reluctance—not only by the Temple members, but by the white supremacist, anti- Semitic National States' Rights Party. Five party members were charged with the bombing, but only one, George Bright, came to trial, and a weak government case led ultimately to his acquittal. Greene does an exceptional job of portraying the social forces at work in 1958: Atlanta, a city hell-bent on progress; the Temple Jews, wealthy, assimilated, but still insecure; the city's peaceful movement toward integration; and a backlash among a small group of fanatics, whom Greene cannily portrays as embittered misfits. The present casts a constant shadow over the past here: Oklahoma City invariably comes to mind, and the courtroom antics of Bright's flamboyant defense attorney make Cochran & Co. look like amateurs. But Greene's flaw is excess. Her image-filled prose can be too rich, her historical background too digressive. And she editorializes annoyingly when people's words and actions speak clearly for themselves. Still, a powerful retelling of a crucial tragedy that, in all its elements, resonates all too loudly today; and a tribute to Rothschild—a forgotten, well, hero of the civil rights movement.
Pub Date: April 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-201-62206-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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
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