A stunning, riveting commentary.
In this sequel to the groundbreaking Terror and Liberalism (2003, etc.), political writer and New Republic contributing editor Berman analyzes the rise of the Islamist totalitarian movement and the Western media’s troubling inability—or unwillingness—to identify and investigate its implications.
The author begins with Islamic history as defined by its major players, including Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Drawing from documents stored in government archives in the United States and Cairo, Berman untangles the legacies of Islam and Nazi Germany. Al-Husseini’s fervent anti-Semitism met neatly with Hitler’s campaign, and al-Banna was al-Husseini’s most ardent supporter, a camaraderie that would have profound influence on the future of Islam. The bulk of the narrative concerns the effect that these political events have on modern-day Islam—in particular, on well-known philosopher Tariq Ramadan, who is al-Banna’s grandson and whose writings are often cited as part of a progressive Muslim movement, yet whose deeper, more conservative meanings often elude the journalists eager to embrace such rhetoric. As a “Salafi reformist,” Ramadan openly reveres his forebears yet purports to stand against violence and oppression. Scrutinizing Ramadan’s writings and speeches, Berman writes that his “modern rhetorics invariably turn out to be translations, in one fashion or another, of Koranic concepts,” and that Ramadan’s opinions carefully provide a “double ambiguity” that draws Western admirers even as his Muslim followers view him as a defender of old-world Koranic ideals. Berman identifies one accomplished Western writer in particular, Ian Buruma, whose glossy treatment of Ramadan represents the exact “flight” from intellectualism that the title implies. The author concludes, glumly, that “the spectacular and intimidating growth of the Islamist movement” in the last ten years, coupled with the rise in terrorism, are the culprits, effectively suffocating deep journalism with “squeamishness and fear.” Despite the complexity, history and nuance of these subjects, the author probes each issue with elegant, incisive language.
A stunning, riveting commentary.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-933633-51-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
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
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
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