Vicariously entertaining.
Longtime FBI hostage negotiator Noesner details his rise from mail clerk to the first chief of the agency’s Crisis Negotiation Unit.
The author’s low point came in Waco, Texas. As one of the negotiators the FBI sent to coax David Koresh and the Branch Davidians out of their compound, Noesner and his team spent weeks trying to bring a peaceful end to the standoff. They continually bargained with the group and had the Davidians ready to leave the compound—until Koresh had a vision from God. Unfortunately, at the time, FBI officials eschewed negotiation for force, something that Noesner had spent more than a decade trying to dissuade. It would take one tragedy (Waco), a few years and several congressional investigations before his tactics—calm, prolonged negotiation—would be vindicated and made the standard for law enforcement. The narrative chronicles how Noesner helped to define those tactics through a series of standoffs—a prison riot in Ohio, a domestic kidnapping in Virginia, a standoff with secessionists in Texas. Each case had its own unique set of issues that Noesner and his team had to solve. The author effectively provides an intense, immersive narrative, making his real-life experiences read like episodes of a good cop drama. By the end of the book, readers will be impressed by the number of crucial moments in which Noesner has played a significant role—from the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985 to the Freeman militia standoff in Montana in 1996.
Vicariously entertaining.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6725-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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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