by Said K. Aburish ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 1995
A long, bitter indictment of Riyadh, whose royal denizens are charged with greed, self-interest, and incompetence. ``Like a rotting carcass, the House of Saud is beginning to decompose,'' writes political consultant and journalist Aburish (Children of Bethany, not reviewed, etc.), who blames Saudi Arabia for the long and wide tragedies of the Arab people. The bulk of his documentation alludes to Saudi involvement in scores of political coups, assassinations, destabilizing insurrections, and full-scale civil wars. According to the author, Arafat, Abu Nidal, Qaddafi, and Idi Amin are all among the destructive forces set into place by the Saudis, who are said to feel safest when everyone else is too busy fighting to count the Rolls Royces, wives, and palaces of their royal family. In Aburish's view, the ruling Wahhabi clan has always acted in its own interest and against pan-Arabic movements, quelling even inter-Arab plans to create unified airlines, railway systems, satellite communications, and a Supreme Court. While Aburish tends to see a Zionist or CIA agent behind every oil driller, there is an attempt to balance passion with research. He traces how Saudi Arabia's conservative brand of Islam opposed secular nationalism during the Cold War and how Saudi petro-dollars have supported groups like the anti-nationalist, fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. But as rising fundamentalism and resentment against the Saudi guardians of Mecca combine with falling economic muscle (Aburish sees the Saudi national debt climbing to $100 billion this year), the author predicts that the Wahhabis will go the way of the Shah of Iran—with significant repercussions for the West. Despite—and often because of—the author's strong bias, this book is valuable reading for anyone who wants to understand the prevailing Arab perceptions of modern Middle Eastern history. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-12541-0
Page Count: 326
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
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
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by Tom Clavin
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by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
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