A singular study exhibiting both military duty and human compassion.
An insider account of the last days guarding, and bonding with, the former president of Iraq.
A group of 12 American military policemen, deployed to Iraq in August 2006, made up the rotating squad that guarded Saddam Hussein over the course of five months in Baghdad while he was tried, convicted, and executed by hanging on Dec. 30. In this alternating account that moves among time periods delineating Hussein’s bloody history as Iraqi leader, as well as the back stories of many of the officers of the U.S. squad and prosecution team, journalist Bardenwerper, a former infantry officer in Iraq and Pentagon fellow, manages to portray a surprisingly sympathetic character in the former dictator. The Iraqi High Tribunal, housed in a former Baath Party headquarters building in Baghdad, had been established by the American victors and “modeled on UN war crimes tribunals.” Presided over by five Iraqi judges (the leading judge was a prominent Kurd) and stocked by many Shia who had been persecuted by Hussein over the years, the court chose to condemn him for crimes against humanity in the specific 1982 incident of a murderous crackdown of 148 Shiite residents in Dujail rather than for the more notorious chemical gas attacks against Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War. At the time of the trial, the air of sectarian violence was rife in Iraq, and Hussein and his defense team—including American lawyer Ramsey Clark and Hussein’s daughter Raghad—were convinced it was a sham trial; Hussein vociferously protested the proceedings in court. Nonetheless, through the eyes of the young soldiers guarding him, the dictator presented as a bland, thoughtful old man who was fastidious in his habits, simple in his pleasures, fond of smoking his cigars in the sun, and discussing his memories with his captors. In skin-crawling detail, the author effectively captures a unique time and place in an engrossing history.
A singular study exhibiting both military duty and human compassion.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1783-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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