An engrossing account of the author’s own experiences written to justify questionable foreign policy that many readers will...
A controversial defense of the 2003 military intervention in Iraq that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Basile—a Forbes opinion contributor, faculty member of Fordham University, and principal of the New York–based strategic communications firm Empire Solutions—combines a vivid account of his on-the-ground experience in Iraq as senior press adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003 to 2004 with an exploration of the political issues that were involved in the Bush administration’s decision to remove Hussein from power. “The coalition wasn’t merely engaged in a fight to build a more participatory society against incredible odds,” he writes. “It was also in a constant clash with forces that affected public perception about the mission.” The author contends that the need to shape public opinion is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the Iraq mission. Although the ostensible justification of the military intervention—the claim that Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction and the existence of a link between his regime and al-Qaida—proved to be false, Basile believes that the war was justified, a wake-up call that alerted us to the danger posed by terrorist groups. However, as the author writes, the “failure to win the media and communications war in Iraq” has left the U.S. more vulnerable “against ISIS and its affiliates.” The merits of the author’s argument are debatable, but his personal account of his experiences reporting the war is gripping. The author rightly points out that confidence in government and media reporting are near all-time lows, creating “a toxic blend that leads to the erosion of citizen-controlled government in the United States.” Basile faults President Barack Obama for downplaying the role of Islamic terrorism and failing to make “the tough sell” needed to maintain a foreign policy that would guarantee “our ability to lead on the world stage.”
An engrossing account of the author’s own experiences written to justify questionable foreign policy that many readers will question.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61234-900-8
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Potomac Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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.
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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