An intriguing history that holds relevance to domestic terrorism in our current era.
A terrorism expert recounts the actions of a group “unlike any other American terrorist group,” one “created and led by women.”
Rosenau (US Internal Security Assistance to South Vietnam, 2005, etc.), a senior research scientist at RAND who also served as a counterterrorism expert at the State Department, traces the seven-year run (1978-1985) of the May 19th Communist Organization (M19), a group of (mostly) women who banded together to oppose U.S. government policies of domestic oppression and international imperialism. Because these individuals—not “automata, relics, or spooks but agents of history willing to sacrifice everything to transform the world”—often relied on weapons to accomplish their goals, the author terms their activities “terrorism,” but he uses the term “violent extremism” interchangeably. Rosenau begins by introducing the original brain trust, Judith Clark (b. 1949) and Susan Rosenberg (b. 1955). Later, the narrative takes on further complexity as the cast of characters and related revolutionary groups expands. The author eventually focuses on six additional women, as well as two men, as the linchpins of M19. All of them used one or more aliases hoping to avoid capture by law enforcement agencies; the welter of names can feel difficult to track, though the list of members and associates helps. Then Rosenau introduces “The Family,” an associate group. Their names, plus their aliases, as well as their intermingling with M19 further complicate the narrative. Nonetheless, the author relies on skilled, detailed research to outline both the goals and violent practices of the revolutionaries. The titular bombing of the U.S. Capitol occurred on Nov. 7, 1983; less than a year later, M19 also bombed the South African consulate in New York City. Various bank robberies receive attention, some of which resulted in serious injuries or death. Most of the revolutionaries introduced end up apprehended and imprisoned, and Rosenau concludes that “the far-left terrorist project that began with the Weathermen in 1969…and continued…with May 19th ended in abject failure.”
An intriguing history that holds relevance to domestic terrorism in our current era.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7012-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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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