by Salman Rushdie ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1987
The noted British novelist (Shame, Midnight's Children) reports on a recent visit to Nicaragua. Rushdie came to the country with a basically anti-American point of view, objecting to the "dirty tricks" of the Reagan government which, as he duly quotes Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, are looked upon as "worse than Hitler." Rushdie's lack of sympathy with Americans extends to a clumsy attempt to capture American dialogue, speckled with "reckons" and similar clichés, surprisingly maladroit for so accomplished a writer. However, this brief but telling account does not idealize the Sandinistas either. Where they show ignorance or naiveté, it is commented upon, such as when an interpreter finds it impossible to believe that forced labor camps exist in the Soviet Union, or when Cultural Minister Ernesto Cardenal refuses to ackowledge any human-rights violations against writers and homosexuals in Castro's Cuba. Although obviously not a reporter by temperament, Rushdie does a diligent journalistic job of seeing the country, even visiting the hospitals full of young casualties of the fight against the contras. Most of this closely argued little book is appealing for its sympathy with this troubled country, where most politicians are poets: Ortega says that "everybody is considered to be a poet until he proves to the contrary." Another poet of Nicaraguan history, trapped by Somoza and ordered to surrender, responded with the memorable line, "let your mother surrender!" But ultimately the unanswered anti-American bias here will gall.
Pub Date: March 1, 1987
ISBN: 081297672X
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1987
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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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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