Masters, an Austrian-born Jew originally named Peter Arany, has an unusual war story to tell, one that has not been told before. Masters was one of 87 Jewish refugees from Hitler who volunteered for military service in Troop 3, No. 10 Commando, an elite unit of the British army. Troop 3 was unusual in that almost all of its members were Austrian and German Jews, men who spoke German fluently and who would be trained in the ways and means of the German army (to the extent that, Masters notes wryly, they probably knew more about German weaponry and organization than most German soldiers). For these men, some of them concentration camp survivors, this assignment represented a unique opportunity to fight back against the Nazis. Ironically, nearly all of them had previously been interned by the British as ``friendly enemy aliens'' when the war broke out. When they were recruited for ``special and hazardous duty,'' they were required to assume new identities, with elaborate cover stories to explain their oddly accented English. Thus, Arany became Masters, Geiser became Gordon, Abramowitz Arlen, and so on. Masters recounts their grueling training with wit and gusto, leaving readers with little doubt that these men were ready for combat. And with the Normandy invasion, they saw plenty of it. Masters and other members of Troop 3 fought in Normandy for three long months; he would return to action in the Netherlands and participate in the final invasion of Germany. His narration of his combat experiences is vivid yet low-key. He never sugarcoats the reality of the violence he witnessed, but the book is leavened by a goodly mix of humor and a warm feeling for his compatriots. An admirable war memoir from a man who was neither a professional soldier nor a professional writer but who has acquitted himself nicely in both roles. There is a foreword by noted historian Stephen E. Ambrose. (32 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-89141-629-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Presidio/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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
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
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