A complex tale showing how hope and courage flourish, even in the toxic soil of totalitarianism.
As World War II looms, darkens and erupts, a group of artists, writers and other exiles gather in Marseilles, where their escapes are plotted and executed by a doughty group led by American Varian Fry.
If Sullivan’s writing seems at times a bit too perky and aimed at readers who know little about the Second World War, her subject matter is of surpassing importance—and her efforts are ultimately effective. An astonishing array of talent fled to Marseilles in the early 1940s, fleeing the Nazi advance, names recognizable as among the most significant in the 20th-century worlds of art and literature: Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, André Breton, Victor Serge. Sullivan (Labyrinth of Desire, 2002) artfully interweaves their journeys and backstories. The escape narratives of Serge and Breton (told near the end) are as harrowing as any emerging from the War. Sullivan’s great contribution here, though, is to bring to life those committed Americans and Europeans who risked all to help others. Fry, who headed the Marseilles activities of the Emergency Rescue Committee (headquartered in New York City), stands out. Although his own government often impeded his work (erecting, rather than removing, barriers), and although the ERC eventually fired him (they found him abrasive), he saved the lives of many hundreds. He found for them difficult trails over the Pyrenees, fetid ships and slow trains—but in doing so, found them freedom. Sullivan also relates the stories of husband and wife Danny and Theo Bénédite, French nationals who worked tirelessly, even after multiple arrests. Others include Hans and Lisa Fittko (Germans), who guided refugees over the mountains, and American heiress Mary Jayne Gold, whose money kept the operation going in the early days. A number of the principals survived to publish their memoirs. The Marseilles villa, the structure where the fearful waited for visas and rescue, was razed in 1970.
A complex tale showing how hope and courage flourish, even in the toxic soil of totalitarianism.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-073250-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.
A ground-level illustration of how the plague ravaged Europe.
For his tenth book, science writer Kelly (Three on the Edge, 1999, etc.) delivers a cultural history of the Black Death based on accounts left by those who witnessed the greatest natural disaster in human history. Spawned somewhere on the steppes of Central Asia, the plague arrived in Europe in 1347, when a Genoese ship carried it to Sicily from a trading post on the Black Sea. Over the next four years, at a time when, as the author notes, “nothing moved faster than the fastest horse,” the disease spread through the entire continent. Eventually, it claimed 25 million lives, one third of the European population. A thermonuclear war would be an equivalent disaster by today's standards, Kelly avers. Much of the narrative depends on the reminiscences of monks, doctors, and other literate people who buried corpses or cared for the sick. As a result, the author has plenty of anecdotes. Common scenes include dogs and children running naked, dirty, and wild through the streets of an empty village, their masters and parents dead; Jews burnt at the stake, scapegoats in a paranoid Christian world; and physicians at the University of Paris consulting the stars to divine cures. These tales give the author opportunities to show Europeans—filthy, malnourished, living in densely packed cities—as easy targets for rats and their plague-bearing fleas. They also allow him to ramble. Kelly has a tendency to lose the trail of the disease in favor of tangents about this or that king, pope, or battle. He returns to his topic only when he shifts to a different country or city in a new chapter, giving the book a haphazard feel. Remarkably, the story ends on a hopeful note. After so many perished, Europe was forced to develop new forms of technology to make up for the labor shortage, laying the groundwork for the modern era.
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000692-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.
A delightful new translation of what is widely considered the first work of history and nonfiction.
Herodotus has a wonderful, gossipy style that makes reading these histories more fun than studying the rise of the Persian Empire and its clash with Greece—however, that’s exactly what readers will do in this engaging history, which is full of interesting digressions and asides. Holland (In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, 2012, etc.), whose lifelong devotion to Herodotus, Thucydides and other classical writers is unquestionable, provides an engaging modern translation. As Holland writes, Herodotus’ “great work is many things—the first example of nonfiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history, the most important source of information we have for a vital episode in human affairs—but it is above all a treasure-trove of wonders.” Those just being introduced to the Father of History will agree with the translator’s note that this is “the greatest shaggy-dog story ever written.” Herodotus set out to explore the causes of the Greco-Persian Wars and to explore the inability of East and West to live together. This is as much a world geography and ethnic history as anything else, and Herodotus enumerates social, religious and cultural habits of the vast (known) world, right down to the three mummification options available to Egyptians. This ancient Greek historian could easily be called the father of humor, as well; he irreverently describes events, players and their countless harebrained schemes. Especially enjoyable are his descriptions of the Persians making significant decisions under the influence and then waiting to vote again when sober. The gifts Herodotus gave history are the importance of identifying multiple sources and examining differing views.
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02489-6
Page Count: 840
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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