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STRONG IN THE RAIN

Name: STRONG IN THE RAIN
Author: Lucy Birmingham
ISBN: 978-0-230-34186-9

SURVIVING JAPAN'S EARTHQUAKE, TSUNAMI, AND FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR DISASTER

by Lucy Birmingham and David McNeill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 30, 2012

Harrowing, sensitive stories of heroism during one of the most traumatic natural disasters in Japanese history.

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Eyewitness accounts of the Japanese tsunami disaster that unfolded on March 11, 2011.

Time Tokyo-based reporter Birmingham and Independent and Chronicle of Higher Education Japan correspondent McNeill bring readers directly into the moment in this action-packed account of the earthquake, tsunami and resulting meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant. In this intense narrative, the authors include stories of fishermen who survived by sailing their boats into the oncoming tsunami waves, teachers who raced to get their students to high ground, and plant workers, bound by a sense of duty and honor, who returned to the melting and highly radioactive nuclear facility to help cool overheating fuel rods. The authors also point out some of the major mistakes that cost hundreds of lives: the evacuation centers that were not beyond the reach of the gigantic tsunami, the sea walls that funneled wave action onto unprotected sites and the general air of forgetfulness that pervaded the region even though tsunamis are not uncommon in Japan. “Each generation builds stone monuments at the highest point of the tsunami that struck their homes,” write the authors, “then forgets their lessons; their faded stone lettering a metaphor for collective amnesia.” Unfortunately for thousands, there are no homes left to mark this tsunami event. Most disturbing of all are the accounts of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the range of misinformation that pervaded the media, including inaccurate accounts of the extent of the damage. The authors also include moving accounts of survivors honoring the dead despite the lack of vehicles to transport bodies, crematoriums to burn them, or urns to hold the ashes.

Harrowing, sensitive stories of heroism during one of the most traumatic natural disasters in Japanese history.

Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-230-34186-9

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012

Categories:

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.