Another smasher by Breuer, who specializes in thrilling reports of WW II spycraft and warfare (Geronimo!, Sea Wolf, Hitler's Undercover War—all 1989, etc.). World War II? What does that have to do with the moon? Quite a lot, especially in Breuer's version: Fully half of his text is a dramatic account of German rocketry in 1939-45, when Nazi scientists, led by the young and brilliant Wernher von Braun, developed the V-1 buzz bombs and V-2 rockets that rained terror in the skies of England. Plots and counterplots abound as the Nazis set up their missile shop in PeenemÅnde and the Allies try to knock it down (at one point launching 4000 airmen and nearly the entire British air force in a massive raid), while von Braun, who dreams of extraterrestrial travel, complains that his rockets are landing ``on the wrong planet.'' Himmler arrests von Braun; Speer frees him; Hitler goofs by aiming V-2s at London instead of port cities; as the Third Reich collapses, von Braun and 150 engineers surrender to bewildered GIs, explaining that they want to help America land on the moon. Meanwhile, Stalin's troops pull off ``the most far-reaching and bizarre mass kidnapping in 20th century Europe,'' sealing entire cities and combing them for rocket experts (20,000 fall into the net) to ship to Mother Russia. The space race is on. Breuer runs professionally through the postwar decades, from early White Sands testing to Armstrong's boots in the lunar dust, but this part of the story has been told before (although Breuer confirms that von Braun was ready to launch a satellite months before Sputnik put egg on our face, but was blocked by military squabbling). Crackerjack war adventures—and, in this case, the moon's the limit. (Twenty-nine photographs—not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-275-94481-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
In three essays based on lectures, Lewis provides an engaging overview of the cultural and political clash between Christian Europe and the Islamic world from the late 15th to the early 19th centuries. Lewis (Near Eastern Studies/Princeton Univ.; Islam and the West, 1993, etc.) takes as his starting point 1492, the year not only of Columbus's discovery of the "New World" but also of Catholic Spain's victory over Islam, after four centuries of struggle, on the Iberian Peninsula. Six months later, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled Spain's Jews, with profound repercussions for all three monotheistic civilizations. Though banished from Western Europe, it wasn't until 1683 that Muslim armies, under the flag of the Ottoman Empire, were repulsed from Vienna for the last time. In briefly tracing the millennium-long clash, Lewis demonstrates how the Christian and Islamic cultures sometimes mirrored each other, noting, for example, that the Crusade resembles a jihad and that the European Renaissance was preceded about 500 years earlier by a great Muslim cultural flowering. He writes far more briefly of Judaism, but here, too, he illuminates, as in his clear discussion of the economic and political forces that drove the Ottoman Empire to welcome the Jews expelled from Spain. Lewis's multilayered analysis of why the West ultimately gained the upper hand over the Islamic world ranges broadly from the technological (the West used gunpowder, which the Muslim world largely scorned) to the linguistic (Western Europe developed written vernaculars from Latin, which accelerated receptivity to cultural change, while the Islamic world retained the beautiful, but somewhat stilted, style of classical Arabic well into the modern era). The book is marred only by a closing, overstated paean to Western civilization, in which Lewis claims that Western thinkers alone in human history have manifested intense curiosity about cultures other than their own. Still, despite its tantalizing brevity, an elegant book.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0195102835
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Reiger, conservation editor of Field & Stream (Wanderer on My Native Shore, 1983, etc.) offers a paean to life lived close to the land. In their early 30s, Reiger and his wife, Barbara, abandoned fast-track publishing careers in New York and Washington, D.C., to settle in a quiet backwater community of coastal Virginia. This graceful memoir is largely a response to his shocked urban colleagues who asked, ``How could you do it?'' As he and his wife restore their traditional Eastern Shore farmhouse and harvest, hunt, and fish on the 67 acres of their farm, Heron Hill (which they had purchased in 1970), he feels a growing sense of connection to the land and the people who live there. He relishes a full range of country life, from salvaging serendipitous roadkill to learning the lore of his ``born here'' neighbors. This account is dense with the detail of hedgerow planting, proper nesting-box placement, the merits of mummichogs (a kind of small fish) for bait and tree swallows for mosquito control. A close observer of nature, Reiger looks also at some of the larger lessons it has taught him: Living off the land instills self-reliance, which is the only access to wisdom; traditional gender roles are rooted in the natural world; pain is proportional to one's ability to survive. His theory of conservation is equally grounded in his farm experience. Save-the- whale rallies and rainforest fund-raisers are not for him. ``Real conservation is hands on, net gain, local habitat manipulation and species management. It's not about letting nature take its course.'' Reiger is the author of 15 books and hundreds of magazine articles, but this memoir suggests that his most satisfying creative act has been the stewardship of his own land. A deeply felt, immensely satisfying memoir.
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1994
ISBN: 1-55821-296-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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