An uplifting story of an extraordinary effort to support human rights throughout the world.
A hard-driving chronicle of a committed group of well-connected do-gooders determined to apprehend the long-terrorizing leader of the violent Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa.
Led by its sadistic leader, Joseph Kony, the LRA sprang up amid the civil war in Uganda in the mid-1980s, and for more than 25 years, it has preyed on vulnerable children to make up its murderous ranks. Inspired by the life of ex–LRA soldier victims like David Ocitti, whose harrowing story of murder and rape alternates between the primary narrative thread, Davis, CEO of the philanthropic organization Bridgeway Foundation, mustered the foundation’s considerable missionary zeal and financial clout to try to take down the elusive Kony. Recognizing that “policy alone wasn’t going to stop the LRA,” especially in “a region that was not a direct national security threat to the United States,” the author and her group resolved to help provide the financial resources to train Ugandan military as well as improve communications among villages in the affected areas. Enlisting the help of Laren Poole, from the Invisible Children movement, Davis corralled a host of formidable participants in her fight—e.g., a notorious Ugandan general; a former covert operative for the special forces in the South African army; and the several hundred Ugandan soldiers selected for the training program who would actually swarm the areas where Kony had last operated. Moreover, there was the financial backing of Muneer Satter, a high-level Goldman Sachs executive, and philanthropist Howard G. Buffett, who provides the foreword. Sadly, despite this incredible endeavor, by the end of the operation in 2015, Kony was still at large. Still, as the author writes, “LRA violence is still minimal compared to the deadliness of the organization pre-mission,” and she succeeds in her hope that the book “will serve as an encouragement to engage more deeply in issues of injustice in the world.”
An uplifting story of an extraordinary effort to support human rights throughout the world.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9592-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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