An intelligent, wonderfully written account of life in millennial Asia that, despite its almost quaint goal of painting a...
An entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking tour of Asia as it prepares for the 21st century.
Husband and wife Kristof and WuDunn (China Wakes, 1994) provide a panoramic view of Asia on the verge of dramatic social and economic change. The impetus for the book is the Asian economic crisis, which, the authors argue, was actually a blessing in disguise, in that it cleared out a lot of the dead wood—totalitarianism, cronyism, and corruption—that threatened to stall Asia's continued "rise." In trying to explain the crisis, Kristof and WuDunn come around to the view that the past 500 years of Western dominance represent a historical anomaly, and they assert that in the near future Asian nations will regain a dominant role in world affairs. This thesis is not particularly original, of course, nor does the book break any scholarly ground (or even survey the existing literature in any great depth). But Kristof and WuDunn are excellent journalists, and they are at their best when presenting anecdotes and images that convey larger truths in compelling and often touching ways. Thus, their analysis of Japan and China (countries where they have lived and where they speak the language) is especially thoughtful and nuanced; their accounts of life in Indonesia and Thailand are also written with confidence. The book's major flaw, however, is its treatment of India. It is unclear why India should be analyzed with East Asia at all—Iran, Central Asia, and Nepal are not touched upon—and the portions of the book devoted to it have a sketchy, added-on quality that is exacerbated by a condescension that verges on distaste (the country is described several times as "neurotic").
An intelligent, wonderfully written account of life in millennial Asia that, despite its almost quaint goal of painting a portrait of a continent, works best when it simply tells the stories of people whom the authors have come to know.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-40325-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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