A surprisingly gripping account of the foreign policy crises and triumphs of the Bush years. The surprise lies not in the inherent drama of the events—the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Operation Desert Storm—but in the tension that the usually low-key Bush conveys. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his national security advisor, contribute their own perspectives at different stages of the crises, with a more general narrative to complement their individual views. It’s an unusual format that works well in conveying the pressures and the variety of opinions Bush had to take into account. The authors avoid too heavy a reliance on hindsight, and thus capture the tension and uncertainty of the moment. There is too much discretion in the analyses of most of those with whom the administration worked but great precision in dealing with their political needs: King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, for example, fearful of giving the US military bases because of fears that the US might leave as it did from Lebanon after the attack on the Marine base. One is left with great admiration for both Bush and Scowcroft. The president understood the importance of consultation and personal contact with allies and adversaries, and carried out that mission with a diligence and delicacy that may be unique in presidential annals. His stroking of difficult allies like Mitterand, including an invitation to stay at Kennebunkport, paid huge dividends. On the advice of Egyptian president Mubarak, he made contact with the rulers of even obscure Middle Eastern principalities, which was to pay off handsomely during Desert Storm. He conveys memorably just how difficult it was to assemble and keep together that coalition, while Mikhail Gorbachev looked desperately for some diplomatic stroke to restore his prestige, Saddam Hussein tried to use Israel to split the Arabs, and opponents argued that sanctions should be given more time. A nuanced and subtle evocation of the presidency in the middle of some of the greatest foreign policy crises of our time. (First printing of 100,000)
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-43248-5
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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