Dubya’s Inferno will be a fun ride for Bush-bashing liberals, but lacks the nuance to propel it to greater cultural...
The new novel from Kozhimannil (Awake America, 1989) is a highly imaginative tale in which George W. Bush gets the punishment many liberals think he deserves.
A blend of fact and fiction, this scathing satire revisits not only the controversial presidency of George W. Bush, but also his death, resurrection and final judgment. On his merciless march down the path to hell, Bush is joined by a familiar cast of characters, including his chicken-hawk administration, media pundits and historical figures representing everything from peace and justice (in the form of Gandhi) to the darkest iniquity (personified by Hitler). Foremost, the book’s Dantean framework supports some entertaining flights of imagination; Bush and his cronies are brought up on charges of war crimes in the 2020s, conservative environmental policies lead to centuries of Al Gorean upheaval and the end of the world in 2847, demons force Bush’s entourage to battle with Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden’s people, Bush’s Scottish terrier, Barney, takes a trip from heaven to hell to scold his former master, and, in the captivating conclusion, a young female victim of the Iraq War forces Bush to sing “Thou Shall Not Kill” as she bounces him off a diving board and into hell’s burning lake of sulfur. However, the commentary has a bit of a hobbled-together, shoot-from-the-hip feel. Often-tangential quotes collected from the media run together and underscore myriad and sometimes random progressive points, such as the danger of junk food. The author has also included a few seemingly local anecdotes, using them to make clear points on a micro level, but apparently settling personal scores as well. Throughout, the venom is poured on thick—especially on Republicans.
Dubya’s Inferno will be a fun ride for Bush-bashing liberals, but lacks the nuance to propel it to greater cultural commentary.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-1439254592
Page Count: 261
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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