An often stunning story of personal triumph amid the political turbulence of the 20th century.
Voticky recounts his Czechoslovakian family’s escape from fascism and communism and his later life as a Canadian pilot in this memoir.
The author was born in 1934 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, during a time when dark political forces threatened to swallow Europe whole. His Jewish parents, Arnold and Annamarie, after witnessing the degradation of Jews at the hands of Hitler’s Nazis, prudently prepared for escape, funneling money to Annamarie’s brother in Switzerland. They fled to Italy, but Arnold temporarily stayed behind, and when he found himself unable to obtain an exit visa, the whole family returned to be with him. After Arnold narrowly evaded arrest, the family once again took flight back to Italy—this time, to catch on ocean liner to Shanghai by way of Bombay and Manila. The author, only 6 years old at the time, attended an American school in China, where he not only learned English, but also cultivated a lasting admiration for the United States. However, the Japanese eventually invaded, and, as Jews, the family was relegated to living in a segregated ghetto until after the war, when they could return to Prague. Once back home, Voticky learned of some of his extended family members’ grim fates in death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. Once the Soviets took over, the family was compelled to run yet again, this time to Montreal. The author lucidly captures the extraordinary drama of his family’s lives as they were caught between two of the 20th century’s worst tyrannies. His story is a stirringly inspirational one, as well; he tells of being so awed by the spectacle of American fighter planes in 1945 that he vowed to become a pilot—and he eventually did, for a commercial airline. The memoir ends with a thoughtful and emotionally poignant reflection on immigration in the United States. Voticky’s account of his adult life is less cinematic than that of his youth, and he can sometimes overburden the reader with minutely detailed descriptions of his aviation career and training. Still, this book remains a gripping slice of history overall.
An often stunning story of personal triumph amid the political turbulence of the 20th century.Pub Date: March 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-3104-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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