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THE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

The essays are densely composed, sometimes presupposing extensive reader knowledge about American military and diplomatic...

The Pulitzer Prize winner builds on his reputation as an iconic investigative journalist, skewering the conventional wisdom about the death of Osama bin Laden.

In four linked essays originally published by the London Review of Books, Hersh (Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, 2004, etc.) excoriates President Barack Obama, some of his national security aides, and members of the military for allegedly lying repeatedly about covert international maneuvering. Although satisfied that bin Laden is indeed dead at the hands of the U.S. military, the author wonders how Pakistani leaders could have been unaware that the terrorist financier and spiritual leader was residing in their midst. Hersh questions the White House version of how bin Laden was discovered inside his housing compound, whether American Special Forces acted independently of the Pakistanis, and whether bin Laden's body ended up at the bottom of the ocean, as publicly stated. The title essay focuses on bin Laden, while the other three build on that topic to delve into American conduct in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria, and other countries invaded by the U.S. under George W. Bush and Obama. To push his compelling scenarios and larger themes about the government's "high-level lying,” Hersh relies heavily on unnamed sources—even more than much of his previous reporting for the New York Times or the New Yorker. His reliance on anonymous sources has led to questioning of his newspaper, magazine, and book exposés dating back to the 1960s, but his reputation for accurate journalism remains intact with numerous editors and readers.

The essays are densely composed, sometimes presupposing extensive reader knowledge about American military and diplomatic involvement in the affairs of geographically remote nations. Context beyond the content of the London Review of Books pieces would have added value to Hersh's reporting.

Pub Date: April 12, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-78478-436-2

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Verso

Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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