The avalanche of minutiae only underscores the tenuousness of the assertions, and the tale drifts along on Maxwell’s...
A shaky case that British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, a giant in his own eyes if not his bankers’, might have been given some help in dying when he tumbled from his yacht off the Canaries in 1991.
Thomas (Gideon’s Spies, 1999, etc.) and Dillon (The Dirty War, 1999, etc.) have both long been writing on the nasty subterranean world of intelligence operations, and here they posit that Maxwell did not drown at all, but rather was the object of an Israeli hit squad after he, ostensibly, threatened Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, with disclosing their joint activities if they didn’t pony up some big money to stave off Maxwell’s creditors. It was no secret that Maxwell was a friend of the Israeli state, dishing out financial advice and assistance with largesse, but he was also the Israelis’ conduit for disseminating a leading-edge piece of surveillance software to secret-service organizations in places like Canada, the old USSR, Zimbabwe, and Guatemala (even Osama bin Laden ultimately got one). Mossad had tricked out the software with a “trapdoor” that would allow them to listen in. Obvious fans of the spy game, Thomas and Dillon lard the story with loads of peripheral intelligence details, perhaps fascinating but not germane; address Maxwell’s many financial shenanigans; and delve into vile details his personal hygiene, all to keep up the reader’s interest in what amounts to the unscintillating tale of the Mossad using a friend to gain access to high places. There is just no conclusive proof that Maxwell died after being injected with a “lethal nerve agent.”
The avalanche of minutiae only underscores the tenuousness of the assertions, and the tale drifts along on Maxwell’s paranoia, bullying, and general unpleasantness, so undesirable a character that readers won’t care how he met his end, just as long as he did. (8-page photo insert)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7867-1078-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
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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