by Tim Townsend ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 11, 2014
Gerecke’s story is only a footnote to “the trial of the century,” but Townsend thoroughly understands and skillfully handles...
In his first book, Townsend, a writer and editor with the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project, examines World War II’s most unusual ministry: the pastoring of the architects of the Third Reich.
On Nov. 20, 1945, the Allies commenced the Nuremberg Trials, an unprecedented proceeding that charged Hitler’s top lieutenants—Goering, Kesselring et al.—with conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity. Due to the strict security surrounding the prisoners, the Chaplain Corps was called upon for the first time in its 230-year history to supply religious counseling to America’s enemies. Assigned to this controversial task since he was Lutheran (like so many of the German prisoners), spoke the language and had experience with prison ministries, Chaplain Henry Gerecke (1893–1961) worked for nearly a year to rescue the souls of some of history’s most notorious defendants. Gerecke’s prewar life story, a quick review of the Chaplain Corps’ evolution, scene-setting to explain the Nuremberg tribunal’s composition and mission, thumbnail sketches of the Nazi henchmen and a recitation of the atrocities they engineered, and prison life for the war criminals are all part of Townsend’s story. However, he focuses most on Gerecke’s delicate interactions with his highly unusual flock. Passages recalling the middle-aged St. Louis preacher’s counseling of Goering (and the decision to deny the Luftwaffe commander Holy Communion) and Gerecke’s first meeting with Rudolf Hess are especially well-done. Townsend authoritatively addresses the excruciating moral and religious issues confronting wartime chaplains and deftly explains the role of a spiritual adviser in bringing the wrongdoer, even one seemingly beyond redemption, back to “a place of restoration.”
Gerecke’s story is only a footnote to “the trial of the century,” but Townsend thoroughly understands and skillfully handles the rich, potentially explosive material it contains.Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-199719-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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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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