A potent history of a remarkable life.
A captivating depiction of a Korean novelist’s time as a political prisoner and the belief in humanity that sustained him throughout the ordeal.
Hwang (b. 1943) is known for his elegant, philosophically self-reflective writing. In this sprawling, detailed chronicle of his life and various imprisonments, he delivers a vivid depiction of some of the historical currents that shaped Korea in the 20th century. Hwang was imprisoned in Seoul after visiting North Korea, which he fled with his family as a child. Upon returning to South Korea, he was accused of espionage and imprisoned via the National Security Act. Many literary figures and activists relentlessly argued for his release, seeing the act as a facade to suppress free speech and imprison activists unjustly. Hwang’s extraordinary life is so dense with history and characters that his lengthy account can be difficult to follow, but the descriptions of his time as a prisoner will move readers. The story oscillates among Hwang’s imprisonment, life outside prison, exile, time as a soldier in the Vietnam War, and recollections from his childhood. The author recounts eating noodles with the former North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung; how the “boxy cars of the East mingled with the sleek sedans of the West amid echoing cheers” as the Berlin Wall fell in front of him; and how his story, among others, made Susan Sontag “shed tears of anger.” Hwang peppers the narrative with prescriptive visions for relations between North Korea and the rest of the world. He is a consummate storyteller, and even those unfamiliar with the topic will find well-written historical exposition and nuanced characterizations. Hwang clearly appreciates the humanity of those he encounters, including prisoners on death row and even Kim Il-sung, contending that no one is beyond moral repair. Such considerations underscore how penal systems are often designed to dehumanize incarcerated individuals—but not Hwang.
A potent history of a remarkable life.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-83976-083-9
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
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