French writer Hadas-Lebel offers a scholarly buy terse biography of the enigmatic Jewish-Roman general and historian Flavius Josephus (37 A.D. - c. 95? A.D.), who participated in, witnessed, and then recorded the Jewish uprising against Roman rule (67 A.D. - 73 A.D.). Hadas-Lebel presents Josephus as an unusually clever but otherwise typical upper-class Jewish male of the priestly class, thoroughly grounded in Jewish Pharisaical traditions, and acquainted as well with the classical Greco-Latin learning of the regnant Romans. A patriotic Jew who feared and admired Roman strength, which he saw firsthand on a youthful visit to Rome, Josephus was a pragmatist who saw no hope in resisting Roman rule (his realism starkly contrasted with the mystical fatalism of many of the other Jewish leaders). Because of his priestly lineage and evident intellect, he became a natural, albeit reluctant, military leader of the rebellion (the causes of which are not explained in any depth); although he opposed the uprising against Rome, Hadas- Lebel speculates, he would have been executed if he has opposed the fanatical Jewish leaders. After an initial victory, the Jewish leaders were reduced to defending their fortified cities against the Roman armies of Vespasian and his son Titus. Josephus, designated by the rebels as the Governor-General of Galilee, defended Jotapata, often thwarting the more numerous and better armed Romans through a variety of clever stratagems. However, Jotapata finally fell, and after its destruction, Josephus befriended Vespasian and Titus through flattering prophecies about their ultimately becoming Emperors (which came true). The Roman generals spared him, and Josephus became the ally of the Romans and witness to their destruction of Judaea, including Jerusalem in 70 A.D. After the loss of Jerusalem, Josephus accompanied his captors to Rome, where he stayed for the rest of his life, and wrote the Jewish War (75?) and Jewish Antiquities (93?), among other works. Much is missing here: there is little analysis of the causes of the Jewish rebellion or of the civil war among Jewish factions (to which, in part, Hadas-Lebel attributes the fall of Jerusalem). Nonetheless, sticking faithfully to extant sources, Hadas-Lebel succeeds in making the astute, practical Josephus, and his moral compromises, come alive, and leaves the reader to decide whether Josephus was a despicable traitor or an admirable realist.
Pub Date: June 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-547161-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | ANCIENT | HISTORY
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Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
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The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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