For those who enjoy a tireless, detailed account of controversial historical events, this is an excellent find.
A painstakingly meticulous, unconventional analysis of the purported 1995 genocide that took place in Srebrenica.
Originally published under the title Deconstruction of a Virtual Genocide (2013), this impressively rigorous reconsideration challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the devastation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The two authors—one a medical doctor who exhaustively assessed all the germane forensic evidence, the other a man who played a part as a defense attorney in the judicial aftermath of the Srebrenica incident—call for a more “holistic approach” to the event, one that considers the three days of killing within the context of three years of war. They also scour allegedly expert testimony and eyewitness accounts, impugning their credibility. The principal, and shocking, conclusion the authors draw is that genocide, in the strictest sense of the charge, never did occur, though they do concede that war crimes were committed, specifically numerous executions. “The attention and vast logistical resources invested in propping up this misleading narrative could have been more effectively used to conduct a proper investigation,” they write. In fact, the authors argue that the preceding three years had been riddled by war crimes, even “pogroms,” committed by Muslim combatants, systematically neglected and even covered up by global media, major governments and a slew of international institutions infected by bias. Further, they contend that such wholesale misrepresentation of the facts only stymies the possibility of future harmony between Orthodox and Muslim communities. Written in often dense prose characteristic of academic literature, this isn’t light fare, and its provocative claims are sure to stir the scholarly pot.
For those who enjoy a tireless, detailed account of controversial historical events, this is an excellent find.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2013
ISBN: 978-0970919830
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Unwritten History
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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