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BUDAPEST

PORTRAIT OF A CITY BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

A beautifully wrought, admiring portrait of a beloved, beleaguered city and its people.

A satisfying history of a city that, “after London, Paris, and Rome…receives more tourists than any other capital in Europe.”

London-based journalist Sebestyen, author of Lenin and Revolution 1989, was an infant when his Hungarian family fled the city after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a cataclysmic event he chronicled in his 2006 book, Twelve Days. His evident love for the city emerges clearly in this engaging chronological account, and he provides a cleareyed sense of the “characteristic Hungarian pessimism.” Over the centuries, the strategic geopolitical locations of Buda and Pest, on either of the Danube, had drawn the attention of conquering armies, from the Romans to the early marauding Magyars, the Ottomans, Austrians, Nazis, and Soviets. Throughout his sweeping history, the author emphasizes the recurrent theme that the city often had to stand alone against these onslaughts. The Ottomans ruled for 150 years and left lasting legacies, such as the coffeehouse, and they mostly tolerated a large Jewish population in Pest. As religious wars in Europe heated up, Hungarian royals “threw in their lot” with the ultra-Catholic Austrian Hapsburgs, bestowing favors and titles on a few mega-loyal families who would come to dominate in decades to come. Nationalism drove the valiant but ultimately doomed first Hungarian Revolution of 1848, yet during the Austrian backlash, Jews were awarded unprecedented liberties. “Nowhere in Middle Europe,” writes the author, “did Jews play such a prominent part in modernization as in Hungary—in industry, commerce, banking, the professions.” The combining of the two parts of the city and replacement of the German language with Hungarian also fueled national pride. Despite being on the wrong side of both world wars and siding closely with Hitler, the Hungarians gained the world’s sympathy with what Sebestyen calls “the defining moment of the Cold War”—standing up to the Soviet army in 1956.

A beautifully wrought, admiring portrait of a beloved, beleaguered city and its people.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023

ISBN: 9780593317563

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 27, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023

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HOW ELITES ATE THE SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT

Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.

A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.

Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.

Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023

ISBN: 9781668016015

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023

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MADHOUSE AT THE END OF THE EARTH

THE BELGICA'S JOURNEY INTO THE DARK ANTARCTIC NIGHT

A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.

A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.

On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young  Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.

A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.

Pub Date: May 4, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021

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