A riveting real-life drama that may reawaken your Covid-19 fears.
The story of a stranded cruise ship at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In this gripping work of narrative nonfiction, journalists Smith and Franklin share the stories of the passengers and crew of Holland America’s Zaandam. In early March 2020, the ship was set to depart Buenos Aires on a monthlong journey around the tip of South America before ending at a dry dock in Port Everglades, Florida. As the authors note, the majority of the more than 1,200 passengers were seniors from around the world—three-quarters over 65, and many were in their 80s. The ship also contained approximately 600 crew members from various nations who typically worked in close quarters seven days per week for more than 12 hours per day. Unknown to most passengers, “forty-eight minutes before the Zaandam’s departure, the U.S. State Department posted a warning about COVID-19 that was as unprecedented as it was unambiguous: ‘American citizens, especially those with underlying conditions, should not travel by cruise ship.’ ” Though news about the virus had been circulating, Holland America had refused refunds. Additionally, according to passengers, safety protocols were lax during boarding, despite assurances to the contrary, and social events continued largely as normal. At the first stops on their ports-of-call list, however, the passengers could sense the tension. Locals had become afraid of the virus arriving in their areas by cruise ship and wanted them out. When similar concerns spread around the world, ports began to close, and the ship faced dwindling supplies and an overwhelmed medical staff, which consisted of only two doctors and four nurses. The authors skillfully capture the fear and claustrophobia that set in as increasing numbers of passengers and crew members began to fall victim to the then-mysterious illness, requiring quarantine, as well as the struggles they faced during their journey back home and beyond.
A riveting real-life drama that may reawaken your Covid-19 fears.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54740-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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 fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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