A timely, valuable resource for those who want a deeper understanding of a troubled region.
A panoramic history of the Iranian people rediscovers their original sources of moral and political strength while dissecting the causes of their cultural decline.
Saney, an Iranian-born academic and lawyer with several titles under his belt, provides a sweeping history of Iran as a “tool to describe the cultural scene.” The first seven of 10 chapters exhaustively describe the arc of Iran’s development, from the rise of the Persian Empire and its ultimate decline through a dizzying succession of dynastic rulers. Not content to merely offer an empirical catalogue of events, Saney mines Iranian history for clues about its essential character, detailing the many accomplishments and contributions proffered to the world. Once a crucible of creative achievement in the region—the Athens of the Middle East—Iran was a center of innovation in architecture, music, literature and science. So what happened? Saney attaches Iran’s general descent to a gradual surrender of its own unique culture after languishing under a train of despotic Arab and Turkish rulers. The painful experience of tyranny broke the Iranian spirit, and the rise of an oppressive Islamic rule substituted a stultifying Muslim order for their indigenous Zoroastrianism. This shifted their cultural focus from “universal benevolence to sectarian prejudice,” “sexual equality to the subordination of women” and, even more fundamentally, from “cheerful vision to mournful existence.” Along the way, Saney also explains the extraordinary influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism and Christianity; their profound connection may be shocking to readers familiar only with the yawning chasms that divide the religions today. This impressively erudite study is saturated by scholarly detail, which could fatigue the amateur historian; however, it is also rigorous and clear, refreshingly shorn of ideological baggage, and unencumbered by hyperspecialized academic jargon.
A timely, valuable resource for those who want a deeper understanding of a troubled region.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1463557003
Page Count: 404
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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