An uneven summary of a very strange history.
An account of the early years of official anti-Castroism, forged in the certainty that “America was good, and America was good for the rest of the world.”
Working through books and articles on the period between Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959 and the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, and adding to them interviews with now-retired FBI agents and other cold warriors, novelist/journalist Pavia (Dutch Uncle, not reviewed) turns in a tale of spy-versus-spy that makes neither side look good. The Havana of the 1950s was a demimonde of brothels and casinos thoroughly under the thumb of American organized crime; on that point, Pavia’s account of movie idol and minor mobster George Raft would be touching were its subject not so loathsome, if less so than Errol Flynn, who “loved Cuba because he could act whatever way he wanted—usually badly—and not have to worry about Hollywood gossipmongers bloodhounding his tracks.” All that changed when the intensely moral-minded Castro rolled into town and threw out the corrupt government—and began executing its soldiers and minor functionaries on Stalinist charges of genocide. The U.S. responded with the formation of an FBI group called the Tamale Squad, a curious moniker given that tamales are a foodstuff of Mexico and Central America, but one that speaks to the agency’s renowned tin ear. Then CIA types like Howard Hunt started spooking around, dreaming up damage. Then came the formation of anti-Castro militias, well-funded by the Kennedy administration (anti-Castro activity first began under Eisenhower), though easily infiltrated by Castro’s agents. Pavia’s sometimes too-breezy tale (“Kennedy was all about youth and vigor and good looks and ambition”) continues with the catastrophe at the Bay of Pigs; Pavia’s account of that grim, useless battle is the best part of the book.
An uneven summary of a very strange history.Pub Date: May 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-4039-6603-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
