It will be left to other books to argue whether WikiLeaks is right or wrong in their mission and approach. This one gives...
Parsing the nearly 2.5 million diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks.
This work is nominally a collection of independent analyses written by a variety of journalists, academics, and public thinkers. Their essays, however, are based on the massive amount of classified information, mostly State Department cables, published by the controversial nonprofit WikiLeaks. With an introduction by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and contributions by people like Sarah Harrison, the editor who helped spirit away Edward Snowden to Moscow, this collection qualifies as the only overview of this material that is sanctioned by the organization. As such, the book strongly echoes the philosophy and values espoused by WikiLeaks. Assange contributes a characteristically intelligent introduction, saying of the cables, “reading them is a much more effective way of understanding an institution like the State Department than reading reports by journalists on the public pronouncements of Hillary Clinton, or [White House Communications Director] Jen Psaki.” A triptych of fiercely critical essays follows, focusing on America’s character as an imperial power, the influence of the WikiLeaks materials on the war on terror, and America’s economic policies as a rationale for intervention in foreign countries. Surprisingly, the most useful and clearly written chapter is almost devoid of secrets. In “Indexing the Empire,” WikiLeaks section editor Harrison provides a clear-cut guide to searching and analyzing the documents in their archive. “Our work is dedicated to making sure history belongs to everyone,” she writes, “not just to elite organizations and their counterparts in the news industry.” The remaining chapters each take a deep dive into what the cables reveal about America’s dealings with a variety of states including Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia, among other hot spots.
It will be left to other books to argue whether WikiLeaks is right or wrong in their mission and approach. This one gives solid context to the cables themselves, explaining what they mean to the wider world.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78168-874-8
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
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