A thoughtful work showing that hatred—and compassion—can flourish anywhere.
An unexpected glimpse of the Holocaust in North Africa, where thousands of Jews were forced into 100 labor camps while most Arabs looked the other way, others collaborated with persecutors and some saved lives Jews.
An American Jew and director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the author set out to find a story about an Arab who saved a Jew in the hope that such knowledge might help end ignorance and denial of the Holocaust in the Arab world. (Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial lists no Arabs among thousands of non-Jewish “righteous” who rescued Jews.) Satloff recounts four years of investigation in Arab countries where wartime brutality against the Jews was commonplace, in particular Morocco and Algeria (under the Vichy French), Libya (Mussolini’s Fascists) and Tunisia (the Nazis). His engrossing and deeply personal study shows how Europeans brought the Holocaust to the Sahara, stripping Jews of rights and assets and forcing them into labor. As A.J. Liebling wrote, Vichy officials in Algeria needed no Nazi pressure to harass Jews: “the Nazis [came along] belatedly and collaborated with them.” Following leads from testimonies and archives, Satloff visits the scant remains of torture sites, including the abandoned stone buildings of the Tendrara labor camp in Morocco, and talks with individuals who describe several convincing instances of Arab generosity toward Jews, notably in Bir Halima, Tunisia, where Si Ali Sakkat opened his Muslim family farm to 60 escapees from a nearby camp; and in Europe, where present-day Muslim leaders confirmed that the Great Mosque in Paris helped some Jews survive the German occupation. The author avers that these and stories yet to be uncovered will help change the views of Arabs who minimize the Holocaust and Jews who refuse to accept the fact that Jews in Arab lands also suffered persecution.
A thoughtful work showing that hatred—and compassion—can flourish anywhere.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58648-399-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
Though cheerleading occasionally grates, Plouffe offers good fodder for readers willing to put in the effort and follow his...
Barack Obama’s former campaign manager and senior adviser weighs in on what it will take to defeat Donald Trump and repair some of the damage caused by the previous election’s “historically disturbing and perhaps democracy-destroying outcome.”
Plouffe (The Audacity To Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory, 2009) managed Obama’s successful campaigns in 2008 and 2012. His unsurprising goal in 2020 is to take down Trump, and he provides a detailed guide for every American to become involved beyond just voting. Where the author is not offering specific suggestions for individual involvement, he engages in optimistic encouragement to put readers in the mindset to entertain his suggestions. Plouffe wisely realizes that many potential readers feel beaten down by the relentlessness of Trump’s improper behavior and misguided policies, so there is plenty of motivational exhortation that highly motivated readers might find unnecessary. When he turns to voting statistics, he’s on solid ground. Plouffe expresses certainty that Trump will face opposition from at least 65 million voters in the 2020 election. One of the author’s goals is to increase that number to somewhere between 70 and 75 million, which would be enough to win not only the popular votes for the Democratic Party nominee, but also the Electoral College by a comfortable margin. Some of that increased number can be achieved by increasing the percentage of citizens who vote, with additional gains from voters who vote for the Democratic nominee rather than symbolically supporting a third-party candidate. Plouffe also feels optimistic about persuading Obama supporters who—perhaps surprisingly—voted for Trump in 2016. As for individual involvement prior to November, the author favors direct action. Door-to-door canvassing is his favorite method, but he offers alternatives for those who cannot or will not take their opinions to the streets, including campaigning via social media. And while the author would love to change the Electoral College, he wisely tells readers they must live with it again this time around.
Though cheerleading occasionally grates, Plouffe offers good fodder for readers willing to put in the effort and follow his advice.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7949-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.
Gornick’s (The Odd Woman and the City, 2016) ferocious but principled intelligence emanates from each of the essays in this distinctive collection.
Rereading texts, and comparing her most recent perceptions against those of the past, is the linchpin of the book, with the author revisiting such celebrated novels as D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Colette's The Vagabond, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, and Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris. Gornick also explores the history and changing face of Jewish American fiction as expressions of "the other." The author reads more deeply and keenly than most, with perceptions amplified by the perspective of her 84 years. Though she was an avatar of "personal journalism" and a former staff writer for the Village Voice—a publication that “had a muckraking bent which made its writers…sound as if they were routinely holding a gun to society’s head”—here, Gornick mostly subordinates her politics to the power of literature, to the books that have always been her intimates, old friends to whom she could turn time and again. "I read ever and only to feel the power of Life with a capital L," she writes; it shows. The author believes that for those willing to relinquish treasured but outmoded interpretations, rereading over a span of decades can be a journey, sometimes unsettling, toward richer meanings of books that are touchstones of one's life. As always, Gornick reveals as much about herself as about the writers whose works she explores; particularly arresting are her essays on Lawrence and on Natalia Ginzburg. Some may feel she has a tendency to overdramatize, but none will question her intellectual honesty. It is reflected throughout, perhaps nowhere so vividly as in a vignette involving a stay in Israel, where, try as she might, Gornick could not get past the "appalling tribalism of the culture.”
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-28215-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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