Despite a dearth of material, the authors deliver a chilling, well-researched biography that opens a whole new window on the...
The story of the man who set the mold for Adolf Hitler; both were delusional, megalomaniacal, irrational, and brilliant propagandists.
Brownell (So Close to Greatness: The Biography of William C. Bullitt, 1988) and Drace-Brownell introduce us to one of history’s most fearsome and least-known characters. Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) helped lead the German army in World War I; victories were rousingly reported and losses rarely mentioned, even to the kaiser. Though the authors describe Ludendorff as a man without a shadow, impossible to fathom, a biographer’s nightmare, they successfully describe this beast of a man. He hated Jews and swore Germany would build a world empire. He had no friends and was rude to everyone, including the kaiser; he was effectively a dictator whom no one dared question. A short war required a speedy conquest of France before turning on Russia, foreshadowing World War II. The authors stress that the war was lost early on, stalled by the Belgians. In 1916, there was a chance for a compromise peace, but Ludendorff refused to accept anything but complete victory, convincing gullible Germans of their greatness while doubling causalities. The authors amply demonstrate the absurdity of some of his wild plots, none of which featured reasoned or workable strategies. Allowing Lenin to return to Russia changed world history, but it was useless in freeing up troops who were needed to enforce his draconian peace. He never really had a Plan B and never took responsibility for his failures. He invented the stab-in-the-back legend that Germany lost because of the Jews, and he swore that the “next war” would see them gassed just as his troops had been. Hitler and Ludendorff had similar philosophies, identical fanaticism, a strong belief in the German superman, and a desire to eliminate the Jews.
Despite a dearth of material, the authors deliver a chilling, well-researched biography that opens a whole new window on the world wars and the German psyche at the time.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61902-609-4
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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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