Terrific on-the-ground reportage during the initial fraught months of the ongoing war.
A Ukrainian-born foreign affairs correspondent maps the war in progress.
As someone who grew up in Kyiv and speaks both Ukrainian and Russian, Wall Street Journal reporter Trofimov, author of The Siege of Mecca, offers a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into the continuing conflict, via both official reports and firsthand accounts from the streets. In Feb. 23, 2022, when “Kyiv was still a city at peace,” the author’s meeting with former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko tipped him off to what was about to happen, as officials began to flee. “Russian triumph within days was a foregone conclusion, Western intelligence services predicted,” Trofimov reports; no one seriously believed Ukraine could hold off Russian forces. “For centuries, Russian military power had terrified Europe,” writes the author. “As for this place called Ukraine, was it, deep down, a real country after all?” Along with Spanish photojournalist Manu Brabo (the book contains a photo insert), the author moved toward the action, first from Kyiv in the first hours of the Russian onslaught, as the Ukraine Territorial Defense, National Guard, and Air Force helped withstand the capture of the crucial Hostomel Airport; to Kharkiv and Mariupol, strategic cities in the north and south, respectively; Voznesensk and Mykolaiv; and eventually to the Donbas, where Putin withdrew his forces reluctantly to dig in and retrench by April. Along the tumultuous journey of many uncertain months, the author interviewed scores of fighters, civilians, and officials, and he capably reveals how Ukraine managed to channel its steely motivation and national unity into real action on the battlefield. Trofimov also ably conveys that despite some wobbly local officials whose loyalties have been tested, there’s been no question where Ukraine has stood since 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and essentially “forfeited the sympathy of most Ukrainians, likely for generations.”
Terrific on-the-ground reportage during the initial fraught months of the ongoing war.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593655184
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.
The acclaimed director displays his talents as a film critic.
Tarantino’s collection of essays about the important movies of his formative years is packed with everything needed for a powerful review: facts about the work, context about the creative decisions, and whether or not it was successful. The Oscar-winning director of classic films like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs offers plenty of attitude with his thoughts on movies ranging from Animal House to Bullitt to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Big Chill. Whether you agree with his assessments or not, he provides the original reporting and insights only a veteran director would notice, and his engaging style makes it impossible to leave an essay without learning something. The concepts he smashes together in two sentences about Taxi Driver would take a semester of film theory class to unpack. Taxi Driver isn’t a “paraphrased remake” of The Searchers like Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? is a paraphrased remake of Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby or De Palma’s Dressed To Kill is a paraphrased remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho. But it’s about as close as you can get to a paraphrased remake without actually being one. Robert De Niro’s taxi driving protagonist Travis Bickle is John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards. Like any good critic, Tarantino reveals bits of himself as he discusses the films that are important to him, recalling where he was when he first saw them and what the crowd was like. Perhaps not surprisingly, the author was raised by movie-loving parents who took him along to watch whatever they were watching, even if it included violent or sexual imagery. At the age of 8, he had seen the very adult MASH three times. Suddenly the dark humor of Kill Bill makes much more sense. With this collection, Tarantino offers well-researched love letters to his favorite movies of one of Hollywood’s most ambitious eras.
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311258-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
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