What was it like to grow up in the Soviet Union? This series of recollections, offers intriguing glimpses of that vanished world, harsh and drab, but full of lively human beings brimming with grand and petty passions, and poignant stories to tell. Tina’s loving Jewish family occupies a tiny apartment in Kiev, Ukraine; her grandmothers live nearby. Negotiating the dreary facts of Soviet life—long queues, cramped housing and lack of privacy, reliance on personal “connections” to bypass senseless bureaucracy—is grueling, but human ingenuity is up to the challenge. The appalling destruction of World War II is blamed alongside Soviet policies for the privations. The author hasn’t quite mastered her storytelling tools. She makes an important reference to the concentration camp Babi Yar in one chapter, but explains it only later. Flashbacks are confusing or misplaced, interrupting the narrative flow and lessening emotional impact. Political and historical references are vague and oddly dispersed. Nonetheless, this memoir offers a rare, often vivid portrait of a world now extinct. (Fiction. 11+)
Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-88776-803-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
Preaching to the choir, perhaps, but an invigorating sermon all the same.
Zinn-ian conspiracy theories, propounded engagingly and energetically by filmmaker and gadfly Stone and Cold War scholar Kuznick (History/American Univ.).
If you’ve read Howard Zinn—or if, like Jeff Lebowski, the Port Huron Statement is still current news for you—then you’ll have at least some of the outlines of this overstuffed argument. Premise 1: Though the United States may pretend to be a nice, cuddly sort of democracy, it’s the font of much trouble in the world. Premise 2: When, post-9/11, neocons began pondering why it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for the U.S. to become an imperial power, they were missing a train (or Great White Fleet) that had pulled out of the station long ago. Premise 3: We like European fascists better than Asian fascists, as evidenced by propaganda posters depicting our erstwhile Japanese foes as rats and vermin. Premise 4: War is a racket that benefits only the ruling class. Premise 5: JFK knew more than he had a chance to make public, and he was gunned down for his troubles. And so forth. Layered in with these richly provocative (and eminently arguable) theses are historical aperçus and data that don’t figure in most standard texts—e.g., the showdown between Bernard Baruch and Harry Truman (“in a colossal failure of presidential leadership”) that could only lead to a protracted struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for post–World War II dominance. Some familiar villains figure in as well, notably the eminently hissable Henry Kissinger and his pal Augusto Pinochet; the luster of others whom we might want to think of as good guys dims (George H.W. Bush in regard to Gorbachev), while other bad guys (George W. Bush in regard to Saddam Hussein) get worse.
Preaching to the choir, perhaps, but an invigorating sermon all the same.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1351-3
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
In glossy textbook style, this latest entry in The Other Half of History series (Women of Ancient Greece, p. 1746, etc.) illuminates the days and lives of wealthy, middle-class, and poor women who lived thousands of years ago in Egypt. The large-scale format of the book allows elaborate full-color photographs to appear on every page, often accompanied by sidebars with brief quotations from ancient Egyptian writers. These provide the book’s main source of interest; Macdonald resorts to a textbook writing style, with deliberately short, declarative sentences that make the material sound more somber than it is. Nevertheless, this book provides a useful tracing of the role of women in history, and would be a good companion reference to Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s classic Mara, Daughter of the Nile (1953) or Sonia Levitin’s Escape from Egypt (1994). (maps, glossary, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1999
ISBN: 0-87226-567-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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