Thin on revelations.
Breaking news from the intelligence community: When the Cuban president leaves the planet, things will change—or they won’t.
Latell has been a CIA Castro-watcher for as long as Castro has been in power, and he has a wry knowingness about the dangers of dogma and certitude. Though he notes that the most loyal audiences for Castro’s interminable speeches have been “us, the anonymous American intelligence analysts working in distant cubicles, parsing his every word,” he allows that there’s much guesswork involved in trying to figure out what makes the bearded one tick. One issue: When did Castro become a communist? Some have ascribed the hard-left turn to bad dealings with the militantly anticommunist Richard Nixon; others say that Castro was born red. Latell adds nuance to the argument by noting that Castro was inclined to the left as early as 1948, but despised the Cuban Communist Party’s cautious leadership; the marriage was one of convenience, at least at first. Another issue: Who will succeed Castro? Latell bets on Raul Castro, the brother with whom Fidel has had an uneasy relationship from their earliest years. Latell hazards that Fidel could not have held power for so long without the backing of Raul, the head of Cuba’s military and a man apparently unafraid of executing his opponents without asking questions. Yet, he adds, Raul Castro shows certain liberal signs that hint that he may emerge in a post-Fidel scenario as someone the West can do business with—if, that is, Raul Castro even wants to be anything more than a transitional boss. Whatever the case, after Fidel’s demise, writes Latell, Raul “will finally be able to express himself without fear that he will disappoint Fidel.” In other words, we’ll have to wait and see.
Thin on revelations.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-4039-6943-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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