Another seamy mystery of the Cold War, nicely told.
William Morgan was a figure straight out of Hemingway. In this spry piece of scholarly detection, Mexico-based journalist Shetterly elaborates—and still, “straight out of Hemingway” may be the clearest description we have.
Fidel Castro was not a doctrinaire, “overt” communist when he started his guerrilla war against Fulgencio Batista’s corrupt regime—at least his guerrilla war was not overtly communist. Moreover, Shetterly argues, Fidel’s organization was not the only one fighting against Batista; of much importance in the fighting in the country’s center was the Second National Front of the Escambray, a pointedly anti-Marxist organization whose “contribution to the Rebel war has been edited out of official Cuban history.” One of the SNFE’s leaders was the gringo Morgan, who turned up with mysterious credentials; he said that he’d taken up the anti-Batista cause when he got involved running guns with “a rather odd assortment of mobsters, teamsters, and ex-GIs.” From Toledo by way of an army stockade in Japan, Morgan rose in the rebel leadership. When the fighting ended and the Fidelistas started consolidating power, Morgan began a complex dance out of John Le Carré with next-door dictator Rafael Trujillo, launching an anti-Castro conspiracy predating the Bay of Pigs and assorted ventures by a year. Was Morgan a double agent working for Castro? Was he a CIA man? Time magazine thought the former, Fidel the latter, and Morgan wound up standing tall before the executioner, acknowledging that he was not a Castro follower but insisting, “I’m a Cuban now. And I believe in Cuba, and I believe in the Revolution, and I have a tremendous admiration—a tremendous respect—for the man.” The possibilities remain open, and Shetterly, to his credit, doesn’t force the evidence, though he does note, suggestively, that when Trujillo finally buddied up to Fidel, his sole request was that Morgan die.
Another seamy mystery of the Cold War, nicely told.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-56512-458-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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