An uplifting account of genuine heroics in the latest American military debacle.
A suspenseful chronicle of a dramatic rescue at the end of America’s evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021.
In his latest, Zuckoff, the bestselling author of 13 Hours and Fall and Rise, finds his hero in Sam Aronson, who gave up his job as a bodyguard for the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service to become a Foreign Service officer; his first post was in Nigeria. Later, while volunteering to help in Afghanistan, he found himself at Kabul International Airport with only a few weeks before its scheduled shutdown. The author delivers a vivid description of the enormous crowds besieging its fortified gates in blazing heat with no food, water, or toilets. Fewer than 40 officials, Aronson included, screened potential evacuees to ensure that their papers were in order or that they were in obvious danger and needed to get out. Screeners were overwhelmed, and as the deadline approached, superiors increasingly restricted those eligible to evacuate. “Family separations again proved the most wrenching part of the work,” writes Zuckoff. “Weeping women clung to Sam. Men cried in his arms. Sam had to pry some away, into the custody of Marines.” The book’s other major figure is Homeira Qaderi, a 38-year-old Afghan activist, author, and TV commentator, whose memoir, Dancing in the Mosque (2020) was a bestseller. At the time, no one doubted that the victorious Taliban would kill her, but for reasons that remain unclear, she refused pleas to flee until the last day. Aronson and Qaderi do not meet until near the end of the book. Mostly, Zuckoff delivers a gripping account of Aronson’s routine during those final days. Increasingly distressed at the tragedies he witnessed, he began to flout screening guidelines, a process that could have derailed his career but apparently hasn’t. Only hours before the shutdown, he received frantic pleas from Qaderi’s American agent. A last-minute rescue seemed impossible, but he made it happen.
An uplifting account of genuine heroics in the latest American military debacle.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593594841
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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