by Ronald L. McGlothlen ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 1993
As the Clinton Administration prepares for a potential trade war with Japan, historian McGlothlen—drawing on interviews with contemporaries of former secretary of state Dean Acheson (Dean Rusk and Paul Nitze among them) and quoting from original policy memoranda—outlines in detail the evolution of US policy toward Japan's trading partners. First as undersecretary of state and later as secretary under Truman, Acheson, says McGlothlen, viewed America's Asia policy not as one of containment but rather as an essential element of Japan's postwar recovery. Japan was the ``workshop'' of Asia, dependent upon the other countries of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere—Korea, China, Taiwan, and Indochina- -for raw materials such as oil, iron, and coal, as well as for food to feed its growing population. Only by rebuilding Japan's delicate balance of trade with its Asian neighbors could the US ensure its control over ``every wave in the Pacific Ocean'' and continue to expand its own trade in the region while protecting itself from the drain of the collapsed Japanese economy. Acheson sought Japan's economic and political security by revising reparations obligations, replacing the US military economic staff, and negotiating a final, less burdensome, peace treaty. But these efforts, McGlothlen argues, brought about more than Japan's stability: They also drew the US into conflicts in South Korea (which provided much of the food for Japan) and in Vietnam (which, as China turned Communist, became an important export market). And Taiwan became an Asian linchpin as well, dominating Japan's trade routes. It's ironic, McGlothlen notes, that Japan's economy—rebuilt at great American expense—has risen up to challenge the US trade dominance that Acheson's plans were designed to protect. A provocative and—given our concern about an imbalance of trade with Japan—unusually relevant examination.
Pub Date: June 14, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03520-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by David Hajdu ; illustrated by John Carey
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