An expert if discouraging history of the world 90 years ago, when “postwar became prewar.”
Brandeis history professor Jankowski examines world events from 1932 to 1933, and it is not a pretty picture.
Three years into the Great Depression, everyone deplored the international crisis, and there was no shortage of claims that democracy, supposedly triumphant at the end of World War I, was on its way out. Although pundits draw parallels with today’s world, where autocrats are growing increasingly popular, Jankowski points out that the Depression saw no rise in dictatorships except in Germany. Everywhere else—in Russia, Italy, Japan, China, Poland, and most of Eastern Europe—they were already up and running. Demagogues promised to restore national glory, but their audience at that time gave food and jobs equal priority. Throughout this bleak narrative history, the author shrewdly juxtaposes interminable peace and disarmament conferences and political events with the national mood in a dozen countries whose leaders revealed a distressing eagerness to discover the source of their misery in rival nations or undeserving minorities. Everyone hated the Treaty of Versailles, including those who imposed it. Far less populous than Germany, France feared invasion no less than it had before 1914: “The menace would return…if not today, then tomorrow.” German representative government was moribund. Hemmed in by the left and right, centrist parties were a permanent minority in the Reichstag, and President Paul von Hindenburg appointed a series of ineffective chancellors—until Hitler, who “had entered…much as his immediate predecessors had—appointed by an aged president under no obligation to do so, after weeks of favoritism, speculation, and backstairs intrigue.” Japan’s year-old invasion of Manchuria and China already prefigured the next war, and Italy under Mussolini (not yet a comic-opera figure) announced its intention to reconquer an empire. “He promised…that in ten years,” writes the author, “all Europe would be Fascist.”
An expert if discouraging history of the world 90 years ago, when “postwar became prewar.” (8-page b/w photo insert)Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-243352-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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