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CUTTING FOR SIGN

From frequent Atlantic contributor Langewiesche—a former pilot who worked the Texas-Mexico border—a terse, clear, tough- minded account of life on both sides of the line. (The title— jargon used by customs officials on Arizona's O'odham Indian reservation—means searching for and reading the tracks of immigrants and drug-runners.) Langewiesche begins and ends his journey in the tense little Texan border town of Marfa (named, improbably, for a character in The Brothers Karamazov), where he lived for years. In between, he travels the line from Tijuana in the west all the way east to Brownsville/Matamoros on the Gulf of Mexico. He describes the waves of immigrants coming across to San Diego; the futile efforts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to slow the traffic north; INS racism and brutality; the corruption, on both sides of the border, of law-enforcement officials protecting and profiting from the drug trade; the horrendous working and living conditions in Juarez and Matamoros as US business invests heavily in maquilas, the assembly plants where Mexico workers make less in a day than US workers make in an hour. Langewiesche sketches memorable portraits of unsung heroes and saints, Mexican and American, working to protect the rights of ``illegales'' in California or of fellow workers—mostly women, mostly young—in the maquilas. A little more Mexican history and culture, a greater sense of what's destroyed back home when Oaxaca villagers pick up and move north, would have given tragic depth to Langewiesche's report. Still, the author shows us the appalling human reality behind business-page slogans and shibboleths—NAFTA, the global economy, the free market—and he makes the border itself look as arbitrary, strange, and inevitable as the Berlin Wall in its day. And of equal geopolitical significance. Compassionate, risk-taking reporting: timely and valuable.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1994

ISBN: 0-679-41113-5

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993

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NUTCRACKER

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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