Book Description
Thirty years ago, Pulitzer Prize—winning author and journalist Philip Caputo crossed the deserts of Sudan and Eritrea on foot and camelback, a journey that inspired his first novel, Horn of Africa, and awakened a lifelong fascination with Africa. His travels have since taken him back to Sudan, as well as to Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania, and from those experiences he has fashioned Acts of Faith, his most ambitious novel. A stunning and timely epic, it tells the stories of pilots, aid workers, missionaries, and renegades struggling to relieve the misery wrought by the civil war in Sudan.
The hearts of these men and women are in the right place, but as they plunge into a well of moral corruption for which they are ill-prepared, their hidden flaws conspire with circumstances to turn their strengths–bravery, compassion, daring, and empathy–into weaknesses. In pursuit of noble ends, they make ethical compromises; their altruism curdles into self-righteous zealotry and greed, entangling them in a web of conspiracies that leads, finally, to murder. A few, however, escape the moral trap and find redemption in the discovery that firm convictions can blind the best-intentioned man or woman to the difference between right and wrong.
Douglas Braithwaite, an American aviator who flies food and medicine to Sudan’s ravaged south, is torn between his altruism and powerful personal ambitions. His partners are Fitzhugh Martin, a multiracial Kenyan who sees Sudan as a cause that can give purpose to his directionless life, and Wesley Dare, a hard-bitten bush pilot who is not as cynical as he thinks he is and sacrifices all for the woman he loves.
They are joined by two strong women: Quinette Hardin, an evangelical Christian from Iowa who liberates slaves captured by Arab raiders and who falls in love with a Sudanese rebel; and Diana Briggs, the daughter of a family with colonial roots in Africa, who believes that her love for her adopted continent might be enough to save it.
Pitted against them is Ibrahim Idris ibn Nur-el-Din, a fierce Arab warlord whose obsessive quest for an escaped concubine undermines his faith in the holy war he is waging against Sudan’s southern blacks.
In a harsh yet alluring landscape, these and other vividly realized characters act out a drama of modern-day Africa. Grounded in the reality of today’s headlines, Acts of Faith is a captivating novel of human complexity that combines seriousness with all the seductive pleasure of a masterly thriller.
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Acclaim for Acts of Faith
“Philip Caputo, from Vietnam onwards, has understood the hardest truths of the modern world better than almost anybody. Acts of Faith is a stunningly unflinching novel. On the surface it is set in Africa, but in fact its true landscape is the ravaged soul of the twenty-first century. Philip Caputo is one of the few absolutely essential writers at work today.” –Robert Olen Butler
“In Acts of Faith Philip Caputo has fashioned a gripping cast of characters and placed them in a spellbinding story. You can’t get any better than that.” –Winston Groom
“Caputo’s ambitious adventure novel, set against a backdrop of the Sudanese wars, makes for a dense, riveting update on Graham Greene’s The Quiet American . . . Caputo presents a sharply observed, sweeping portrait, capturing the incestuous world of the aid groups, Sudan’s multiethnic mix, and the decayed milieu of Kenyan society.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Acts of Faith offers an image of Africa deserving comparison with Conrad, Hemingway, Peter Matthiessen, and Jan de Hartog’s forgotten near-masterpiece The Spiral Road.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Philip Caputo is a splendid, muscular story teller who possesses the crucial power to make endearing ordinary men from diverse fragilities and stubborness.” —Gloria Emerson, Los Angeles Times
“For the past twenty years, Caputo has written parables of hubris upbraided, populated by outsiders whose defects lead them into trouble as unerringly as does fate.” —David Haward Bain, New York Times Book Review
“Caputo lets no one and nothing off the hook.” —Richard Bausch, Washington Post Book World
“Caputo takes on most of the hot-button issues of our time–racism, random violence, disempowerment, the decay of social fabric, even the nature of evil itself–and more than lives to tell the tale.” —Roget L. Simon, Los Angeles Times
Acclaim for Philip Caputo's previous books:
The Voyage
“An adventure filled sea story.” —Andrea Barrett, The New York York Times Book Review
“Genuinely exciting . . . Caputo’s prose is a pleasure . . . The ending satisfies completely, adding layers of intriguing meannig to the already rich adventure story.” —Debra Spark, Chicago Tribune
“A compellig novel that offers both rousing adventure and penetrating insight into the mystery that is family.” —Library Journal
“A high seas classic combined with a mystery . . . a complicated psychological drama . . . an engaging study of the emotional life of young me . . . [their struggles] toward independent adulthood, their rage and love for an unapproachable father.” —Paul Kafka, San Francisco Chronicle
“Caputo is a conjurer of rich atmosphere; he knows the sea and sailing. But he also knows the ways of building finely shaded characters. Readers will find all his talents on display here.”--Brad Hooper, Booklist
“Strongly imagined . . . those who plunge headlong into its dark waters will not soon forget the experience.” Kirkus Reviews
Exiles
“What makes Exiles extraordinary is the lead story, “Standing In,” . . . Here Mr. Caputo brings fresh subtlety to the psychology of exile. It is one of the most engaging works of fiction he has yet produced.” --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times
“Philip Caputo is a splendid, muscular story teller who possesses the crucial power to make endearing ordinary men from diverse fragilities and stubborness.” —Glor
Customer Reviews:
600 pages of people hooking up in the middle of the Sudan.......2007-09-17
Acts of Faith is a book about a cast of characters who strive to do humanitarian work in the Sudan for a good reason, but slowly drift away from their original reason of why they came there in the first place.
Douglas Braithwath, the main "entrepeneur" of the operation runs an airline company called Knight Air that drops relief supplies illegally in the Southern Sudan mountains, and while his dreams of helping the Sudanese people are legit at first, he eventually becomes obsessed with profit margins and getting more planes. The story is fleshed out by Doug's cast of pilots and relief workers that are under his command or use his airline regularly for Sudan travel.
This book written by Caputo as his latest creation explores "somewhat" the crises in Sudan during the mid 90s. Caputo is an exceptional creative writer, giving the reader a feeling of "being there" in the Sudan, even to the point of feeling the tics and flys biting you while you read the novel. The pace of the novel moves fairly slow, with a few moderately intense action scenes. Beyond the surprise attack air raids and the injuring of a few key cast members, the focus of the book is each person's inner monologue.
And what a monologue these characters portray. In the process of the novel, every female character written into the story sleeps with another person. The book details with pinpoint accuracy the events leading up to one person sleeping with another, so much so that its just plain boring with 20 or more pages of it devoted to each person's affair. Am I supposed to be reading about the atrocities of the Sudan, or how people want to have sex with one another in the middle of a war?
The premise of the book is just not interesting, and it's largely unexplored until Michael, an SPLA officer in the story explains it by the middle of the book. People believe in acts of faith for a better tomorrow, which is why people like the characters in the story do what they do. The central theme however is masked with so much love and sexual tension towards one another that Caputo writes in the novel, I'm not at all impressed by the ending. I believe Caputo intended this to happen, but after reading the sexual stories of Quinnette and Michael, Lady Diana and Fitzhugh, Tony and Mary and Wes Dare (which was a horrid name choice for a character, Dare???), it was just a moot point that could have been explained in less words.
I feel like this was a book written for romance novelists or avid porn watchers who want a really good storyline before getting to the juicy "sex scene". I wish this novel explored more of the inner workings of the characters rather than the animal desires each of them had toward each other. It didn't contribute to the story, and made for a boring read. At 600 pages long, I recommend reading something else to bide the time.
Fantastic...except for a bad habit of simile..........2007-08-31
My review will be brief, as I have only one bone to pick with the author. What I thought was first an issue that demonstrated a sexist and dehumanizing behavior within third person limited narrative, I was dismayed to discover that this "bad habit" (of comparing women with animals) was a offensive crutch Caputo leaned on throughout the novel. My evidence:
Her black skin sparkled with sweat, and when she pressed down, the muscles in her arms and along her ribs stood out, like those in a slightly underfed leopard. (196)
Oh, and the way she would whisper 'I am here,' and then turn over on the sleeping mat and arch her back, presenting herself like a lioness in heat... (197)
She made some animal-like croaking sound. (251)
Her skin was as black as a panthers and she moved like one... (310)
"I don't think so. I looked at you and thought, 'she has the legs of a gazelle.'" (396)
She rose to her knees in a feline crouch, sighed through clenched teeth as he penetrated her... (424)
They made love like wildcats... (528
There was something about Yamila that Quinette sensed intuitively--she was an implacable natural force, as unconscious as a lioness seeking a mate. (540)
There she stood, all feline sinew, leverage in her braided muscles... (542)
Yamila's demeanor and expression underwent a dramatic change whenever he was near, the she-leopard domesticating herself instantly into a demure kitten. (557)
Women are consistently dehumanized to animals--particularly large cats--in this novel, especially when they are in a sexual situation (either complicit or forced) and when two women interact. Because this happens with regularity in ACTS OF FAITH, I find it to be an unforgivable habit of Caputo's. I nearly stopped reading this book because of this regular crime of comparison, but was unable to because of the compelling and significant subject matter. It's unfortunate that such a fantastic book (and writer) has stooped to such a level. I hope that Caputo, writers, and readers are able to see this damaging cliché for what it is.
If you enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible..........2007-07-12
Well-developed characters with an intriguing plot. 200 pages into the book, I began to fret about the book coming to an end. The "cheat sheet" list of characters was helpful to refresh my memory when I didn't have time to read for a few days.
Fantastic Depiction Of Compromise's Aftermath.......2007-06-08
Acts of Faith is one of those rare works of fiction that takes the reader to someplace outside of their realm of experience, and leaves them feeling better for taking that journey. Caputo does a masterful job of depicting an environment where selfless action is a coincidental byproduct of fulfilling personal interest. Best of all, he does it with energetic prose, realistic characters with which a reader can identify, and dialog that is believable. The result is a book that is epic in scope, yet intimate in its portrayal of the compromises which bring life to the cliché that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Acts of Faith is a monumental work that deserves a place on everyone's reading list.
Understanding Sudan .......2007-05-16
This was such a great book! The characters are so well described, I felt like I was almost a part of their life, and right there with them. His descriptions of Sudan itself, the flying, the Nuba region and people, certainly helped me to understand how complex the political situation is in Sudan. I read in the paper about current events (2007), and Mr. Caputo's book now helps me to put them in perspective. There isn't any easy solution, but at least now I can read between the lines of the media accounts.
The review that mentioned the fast pace towards the end of the book , is so true. I didn't want it to end, yet my eyes were racing over the pages to keep up with the action.
Average customer rating:
- Searching for meaning in the darkness of the human heart.
- The human face of the news we don't want to hear...
- A stark, beautiful, raw novel
- MEDIOCRE
- A review from someone not interested in plot or Sri Lankan affairs
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Anil's Ghost
Michael Ondaatje
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ASIN: 0375410538
Release Date: 2000-04-25 |
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In his Booker Prize-winning third novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje explored the nature of love and betrayal in wartime. His fourth, Anil's Ghost, is also set during a war, but unlike in World War II, the enemy is difficult to identify in the bloody sectarian upheaval that ripped Sri Lanka apart in the 1980s and '90s. The protagonist, Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan, left her homeland at 18 and returns to it 15 years later only as part of an international human rights fact-finding mission. In the intervening years she has become a forensic anthropologist--a career that has landed her in the killing fields of Central America, digging up the victims of Guatemala's dirty war. Now she's come to Sri Lanka on a similar quest. But as she soon learns, there are fundamental differences between her previous assignment and this one:
The bodies turn up weekly now. The height of the terror was 'eighty-eight and 'eighty-nine, but of course it was going on long before that. Every side was killing and hiding the evidence. Every side. This is an unofficial war, no one wants to alienate the foreign powers. So it's secret gangs and squads. Not like Central America. The government was not the only one doing the killing.
In such a situation, it's difficult to know who to trust. Anil's colleague is one Sarath Diyasena, a Sri Lankan archaeologist whose political affiliations, if any, are murky. Together they uncover evidence of a government-sponsored murder in the shape of a skeleton they nickname Sailor. But as Anil begins her investigation into the events surrounding Sailor's death, she finds herself caught in a web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy.
Like its predecessor, the novel explores that territory where the personal and the political intersect in the fulcrum of war. Its style, though, is more straightforward, less densely poetical. While many of Ondaatje's literary trademarks are present--frequent shifts in time, almost hallucinatory imagery, the gradual interweaving of characters' pasts with the present--the prose here is more accessible. This is not to say that the author has forgotten his poetic roots; subtle, evocative images abound. Consider, for example, this description of Anil at the end of the day, standing in a pool of water, "her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her." In Anil's Ghost Michael Ondaatje has crafted both a brutal examination of internecine warfare and an enduring meditation on identity, loyalty, and the unbreakable hold the past exerts over the present. --Alix Wilber
Book Description
With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing.
The time is our own time. The place is Sri Lanka, the island nation formerly known as Ceylon, off the southern tip of India, a country steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition--and forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war and the consequences of a country divided against itself.
Into this maelstrom steps a young woman, Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to work with local officials to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island.
Bodies are discovered. Skeletons. And particularly one, nicknamed 'Sailor.' What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past--all propelled by a riveting mystery.
Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka's landscape and ancient civilization,
Anil's Ghost is a literary spellbinder--the most powerful novel we have yet had from Michael Ondaatje.
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With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing. The time is our own time. The place is Sri Lanka, the island nation formerly known as Ceylon, off the southern tip of India, a country steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition--and forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war and the consequences of a country divided against itself. Into this maelstrom steps a young woman, Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to work with local officials to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. Bodies are discovered. Skeletons. And particularly one, nicknamed 'Sailor.' What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past--all propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka's landscape and ancient civilization, Anil's Ghost is a literary spellbinder--the most powerful novel we have yet had from Michael Ondaatje.
Customer Reviews:
Searching for meaning in the darkness of the human heart........2007-09-02
"One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims" (p. 176).
In its examination of human brutality, this is a powerful novel that searches for meaning in the darkness of the human heart. The horror, one is reminded, the horror. Best known for his Booker Prize winning novel, The English Patient, Philip Ondaatje's (1943) fourth novel, Anil's Ghost (2000), tells the story of 33-year-old Anil Tissera, a westernized native Sri Lankan, who returns to Sri Lanka to investigate claims of international human rights violations in the form of political massacres. The novel is set in the in the 1980s and '90s, while the government, anti-government insurgents, and separatist guerrillas are secretly eradicating the fearful population. With the help of a 49-year-old government archaeologist, Sarath Diyasena, Anil--a forensic anthropologist--attempts to identify skeletal bones (nicknamed Sailor) she suspects are the remains of a recent victim of Sri Lankan governmental murder. "The central truism" of Anil's work is that "you could not find a suspect until you found the victim" (p. 16). As Anil pursues her fact-finding investigation into the mystery surrounding Sailor's death, she becomes intwined in a suspenseful web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy, and it is difficult for her to know who to trust. Even Sarath's motivations are confusing, if not suspect. Through a series of flashbacks, as the title suggests, Anil is forced to confront her own ghosts, which is really the center of Ondaatje's novel. The plot unfolds with the tension of a thriller, and with Ondaatje's characteristic subtle, poetic flourishes along the way. (When he describes the "starkness of the desert" in the rain, you can smell the "toxic quality" of the creosote, pp. 148-49.) It is his stunning writing style that has made me a loyal Ondaatje reader.
G. Merritt
The human face of the news we don't want to hear..........2007-06-29
In order to maintain our sanity, we live on the very margin of our conscience, barely conscious of the world around us. If we want to step deeper inside this world, the revelations will ruin us for the lack of solutions for the ever existent human crises. A mere glimpse into the world will make us longing for the peace of mind we once had, to find an easy solution or forget the truth of life altogether. The absent minded happiness and peacefulness of the middle class is the healthiest/least self-destructive of all available ways to ignore the world. This book is about the people who can't escape the truth, either because they live in the midst of it or because they were thrown in and forced to face it.
Whatever is lacking here in the quality of a solidified prosaic form is irrelevant due to the immediacy of the human tragedy that is happening in Sri Lanka and other countries. Read it just to become part of the real world, nor for any other reason.
A stark, beautiful, raw novel.......2007-05-16
I read this book over two days, and I could hardly put it down. Ondaatje's prose is lyric and clear, evoking so many emotions at once. He creates pictures, and I could feel the environment of his characters. It makes me want to go to Sri Lanka and discover this culture. Yet I also understand that all of us are in the human experience together, with the love we share with one another, and the pain we use to control one another. A gorgeous novel. Thank you Mr. Ondaatje.
MEDIOCRE.......2007-02-09
Some parts of the book weren't bad and it tells something about the war in Sri Lanka then flashes back to the skeleton man named Sailor that was found. Too vague and too much flashing back and I didn't care for the end. Some parts I really got into and were interesting but other parts were boring. I was dissapointed somewhat in this one. Didn't care for the plot. Would I read it again, NADA.
A review from someone not interested in plot or Sri Lankan affairs.......2006-12-09
I came across "Anil's Ghost" more or less by accident. An acquaintance of mine gave me the book, I sat down with it and found myself rattled. Not, however, by the brutal and monotonous descriptions of wounds and traumas the author uses to drive in his anti-war message - if you read, expect to spend plenty of time in hospitals. Nor by the loose plot: many of the very greatest novelists (Musil, Cortazar, Kundera, to name a few) wrote books "about nothing," although there is a difference between not going for plot and trying but failing. The characters, by the way, did not intrigue me, even the ones, Palipana for instance, with a little depth.
But it was the style that bothered me, the style and the praise heaped on it by authorities no lower than The New York Times Book Review. The prose of "Anil's Ghost" is simple. Too simple. Now we know, of course, an entire range of lauded simplicities in literature, from the noble harmony of Lord Dunsany to the gruff brevity of Hemingway. Come to think of it, Ondaatje's is somewhat like the latter - minus the concentrated, stored energy, where the durable power of a phrase stands in inverse proportion to the length of it. Ondaatje tries to speak of war and mutilations and fear with the terse language of a medical investigator, which is, of course, exactly who Anil herself is. Yet, having left Sri Lanka long before the civil unrest, Ondaatje is the sort of Hemingway who knows bulls by hearsay. There is no sense of a close, lived-in familiarity behind the lush exotics. The simplicity of sentence structure ("She went, he did not think" etc.) reveals in this case a sort of poverty rather than a need to pack experience tightly.
After all, Ondaatje tells very little of the actual situation in Sri Lanka. Others have already noted how the book leaves us in the dark as to the particulars, the "beef" of the conflict: the who, the where, the why. Ninjas all of the fighters, looks like. It may be "poetically" appealing to think that war begets war, and something like this Ondaatje says, yet it is true only on the level of personal vindictiveness. A novelist is in position (perhaps it is a unique position) to take a broader view, rise over the grief and pain of those actually involved and extract, with the necessary cruelty, some meaning out of the mess - not a prediction or an easy recipe but at least a diagnosis. Then, perhaps, the suffering of Sri Lanka would present itself in terrible colors to us - something that mere gruesomeness of gore can no longer achieve. It is a cliché that we have all been anesthetized by violence on the TV screen, and a novelist must turn journalist to bring back the sense of dreadful reality. To do that in earnest, however, would require a different eye and a longer book.
In "Anil's Ghost" the Sri Lankan conflict comes across as a plot device for a plot that doesn't exist.
One alternative to journalism is, of course, character and textual study, a careful management of all levels of one's writing. From novel to novella and across the genres, there is space for allusions, for breaking sentences up, for humor and idiosyncrasy. Sarath, Anil, even Sailor could be actors in a drama. War or peace, the human mind is a fine and inept thing, bloated and full of itself, ironic, branching into minute obsessions, habits and rituals, not random, but bound and indebted to each other by history. The way someone ties his shoes can speak volumes... but not this volume. Ondaatje does not choose this second path, nor a third one - he builds dialogues and chooses mannerisms according to rules of symbolism. As a result, even quirks such as Anil's past as a "swimmer" and her dance in the rain much later in the book begin to MEAN something - embracing her heritage, in this case. Everything fits a little too smoothly into Ondaatje's general plan. When characters spell out some kind of message, it is a sure sign that the writer lacks interest in them for their own sake. The war in "Anil's Ghost," then, is not a backdrop for character study. But if Sri Lanka is neither scenery nor, in its total vagueness, the subject of the novel, what is it?
Something is wrong, something is lacking, and I'm searching here for that missing element. Why is it, I ask myself, that I only give it 3 stars (which it deserves, not being a "bad book")? How did Ondaatje annoy me into reviewing? And the best I can come up with is the following: there is something monstrous about writing, something involving a re-arrangement of consciousness into new forms, something similar to re-making a world. To write fiction is not to simply to tell what happens or might/would have happened. It is to trap with words, to draw into a realm that breathes and moves in a kind of unsettling semi-independence. A novel is a cat of hidden and delicate tastes - where it goes, no one knows, and it starves on a diet of INTENTIONS - especially on the thin milk of ideology. This is all quite generic, not too helpful and, of course, whether an attempt to breed a world succeeds cannot be seen in advance. Yet, if successful, the true masterpiece more fairly deserves, and more easily carries, the accusations of solipsism and density than the sort of insufficiency that gasps on these pages.
To conclude, I was reading Bytov's "Pushkin House" the other day. (Aside: it's funny how mediocre novels get 169 reviews - 170 with this one, and counting, but one of the most magnificent pieces of Russian literature has received exactly -1- comment. At least it's five stars.) This phrase of Bytov's drew my eye: "...The writing was plain, but with occasional lucky finds, which he seized on, developed and so nearly approached artistry..." I remembered it now in connection with the "lucky finds" of Ondaatje, who has put out thirteen books of poetry. Beauty frequents "Anil's Ghost": the vigor that Ondaatje's prose is missing bubbles in his metaphors. He should have assembled them into a fourteenth collection instead.
This contrast between prose and poetry in "Anil's Ghost" is bewildering. What is more, the figures are more often than not superfluous - not to say excessive, but they do little for the rest of the scene. Frequently they are inappropriate for the context or just make little sense, Ondaatje being too preoccupied with the "lucky find" itself to examine it. I quote from page 101: "She had one arm up, holding on to the rafter above her head. She herself felt like a whip that could leap out and catch something in its long finger." Feeling like a whip, ready to catch, is intuitively correct and understandable, but comparing a whip to a finger is, I think, "wrong." It does not work - the things compared operate in completely different ways. Both are long already, granted, but a whip lashes out, and even when it snatches (think Indiana Jones), it is flexible, tail-like or, perhaps, trunk-like.
A finger, on the other hand, is thicker, can snatch nothing by itself and bends only one way. Then there is the dubious grammar of "catch IN the finger." Ondaatje bravely takes these risks, but the two images, juxtaposed side by side in a reader's imagination, are not likely to mesh very well, or all that well. In short, the metaphor is so-so. Yet in this instance and always Ondaatje seems to be of the opinion that the more, the merrier, and that better a random figure than none at all. He is not aware of the silent crowd-like presence of the surrounding text, whose approval is the rite of passage for a sentence.
At other times he simply does not know when to quit. Consider the quote from the Amazon review: "...her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her." Beautiful, yes, although there is something with perspective here (reading, I never knew whose voice I heard, it seemed neither the author's nor the characters'). And the question of fitness remains. No sentence is an island: what does this one aim to do, what does it follow, in what does it result, are these all important in the overall melody and in the melody of the scene... the author never shows a sensibility for looking that far.
Assuming no conflicts there, how I wish Ondaatje had STOPPED after the word "day"! "Her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day." Nothing more: one could end a paragraph, an entire chapter with this. The second half of the sentence adds nothing new. And while something can be said for "layers," the glorious expression "undressed the day" comes just before it, leaving the reader no respite, no two-second break to catch his breath, climb down from the height of admiration for "stripped" into the quiet gulf between it and "layers." There he could combine the two figures, observe them together for double the fun. But the tropes blend, overreach, and the result is begging for excision.
And yet it is considered "quite well-written"... Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.
On the other hand, I suppose it is good to know that someone can still produce imagery, even if he does not know what to do with it. Better misplaced poetry than another Grisham - that unhappy sentiment, I would guess, usually funds the praise reviewers heap on the countless books they must sort out. The bar has been seriously lowered... Near the beginning I mentioned a few of the literary giants. It is hard to say how they would fare with today's critics. Would "The Man Without Qualities" earn "acclaim," when a book such as this earns it as well? Is there some greater badge of merit, some superlative award and reward? Even the Nobel Prize falls into odd hands sometimes. Really, what kind of fame can the most talented writer on Earth (let us imagine him) hope for in the year 2006 or 2007? But, perhaps, the hour is too late for the label "great literature" to be assigned.
Book Description
The definitive history of the epic struggle for economic justice that became Martin Luther King Jr.'s last crusade.
Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up like garbage in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a public employee strike that brought to a boil long-simmering issues of racial injustice.
With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis battlefield: stalwart black workers; fiery black ministers; volatile, young, black-power advocates; idealistic organizers and tough-talking unionists; the first black members of the Memphis city council; the white upper crust who sought to prevent change or conflagration; and, finally, the magisterial Martin Luther King Jr., undertaking a Poor People's Campaign at the crossroads of his life, vilified as a subversive, hounded by the FBI, and seeing in the working poor of Memphis his hopes for a better America. 16 pages of illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Recalling memories.......2007-07-13
As one who lived through the history recalled in this book,I found it excellent.It is great to read a book in which you personally knew all the people written about and recall all the events.Michael Honey has done an excelllent job.I highly recommend this book to all students of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King jr. Especially I recommend it to all residents of Memphis and Tennessee.May we never allow this history to repeat itself
A Measure of the Men.......2007-01-06
This might be the finest book written on Martin Luther King: it certainly is the best one that I have read about him. Honey is a splendid writer, with a style that I find more accessible than Taylor Branch's. No doubt that Branch has written the seminal history of King and his times, but his writing can become tedious due to too much detail and meandering sentences.
Honey is an award-winning historian who has written two previous excellent books that demonstrate his skill as an oral historian. The outstanding feature of this book is the numerous interviews he conducted with important figures, which keep the book always absorbing.
King receives much attention, but Honey shows that the Memphis strike was led by local workers and union officials who were fighting to escape the living hell of dangerous working conditions (the strike grew out of the deaths of two sanitation workers who were mangled in a malfunctioning garbage truck when they sought shelter from a rainstorm).
In addition to the stories about the local workers and organizers, King is portrayed as an important influence who was struggling with internal fighting among black civil rights groups, includng the NAACP, the Urban League, SCLC, and SNCC, the FBI, Lyndon Johnson, who was angered by King's anti-war proclamations, and most whites who thought King was moving too fast. Any reader who questions King's leadership and selflessness, needs to read this book to have those views dispelled.
Ultimately, the Memphis strike paved the way for labor improvements throughout the South.
This superb book should be considered for all major book prizes. For King scholars, it is essential and for all other informed readers, it is an excellent narrative of King and his times.
Average customer rating:
- Powerful and frightening
- Excellent, touching reading
- almost religious in its power
- Shallow Treatment of a Vital Subject
- Stories of important and incredible strength and vision
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Speak Truth to Power : Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World
Kerry Kennedy Cuomo , and
Eddie Adams
Manufacturer: Crown
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ASIN: 0812930622
Release Date: 2000-09-19 |
Amazon.com
Anonymous wears a black shroud and a hangman's noose. Unnamed and masked, perhaps he or she will avoid the fate suggested in the haunting photograph that graces the cover of this remarkable book. Anonymous is one of the mostly unsung heroes interviewed by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo who are fighting for human rights in places where torture, imprisonment, and death are the side effects of speaking out against such atrocities as child soldiers, sex slavery, honor killings, and repression of political rights. In Anonymous's case, teaching Sudanese women their rights where a civil war is being waged by Islamic extremists could land him or her in a "ghost house" of torture, or, if lucky, in prison for an undetermined amount of time. In an age when heroes seem almost a thing of the past, these 51 human rights defenders demonstrate that real moral courage is alive and well on planet Earth. As Kennedy Cuomo writes in her introduction, these are the Martin Luther Kings of the world, and "courage, with its affirmation of possibility and change, is what defines them."
For instance, there is Ka Hsaw Wa, who, after hearing stories of horrific torture and abuse from Burmese villagers, took the bold step of bringing a lawsuit against the American oil company Unocal for using human rights abuses to further its profit margins. To protect himself as he gathers documentation, he travels the jungle in black clothes and has had to interview victims using only his memory for lack of pen and paper. Fauziya Kassindja came to her work through no choice of her own--when she fled Togo to escape genital mutilation she found herself shackled and abandoned in the U.S. prison system, and has become a force for change in both countries. Others have seen a need and filled it, such as Muhammed Yunus, who has achieved miraculous results in Bangladesh by giving small loans to those who no one else would entrust with money--poor women without collateral. The results have been nothing less than the transformation of the women, their families, and the political landscape of a nation.
There are also the famous here: Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Rigoberta Menchu Tum. Václav Havel speaks on becoming a dissident and the divine, while the Dalai Lama talks about compassion, suffering, and nonviolence. These are extraordinary people, and yet they are as human as the rest of us. As Oscar Arias Sanchez says, "One works for justice not for the big victories, but simply because engaging in the struggle is itself worth doing." An inspiring work made beautiful by photographs by renowned photographer Eddie Adams. --Lesley Reed
Book Description
Speak Truth to Power presents an inspiring rainbow of heroes from more than thirty-five countries and five continents. In searing and uplifting interviews, veteran human rights defender Kerry Kennedy Cuomo examines the quality of courage with women and men who are dramatically changing the course of events in their communities and countries.
Imprisoned, tortured, and threatened with death, they speak with compelling eloquence on subjects to which they have devoted their lives and for which they have been willing to sacrifice -- from free expression to the rule of law, from women's rights to religious liberty, from environmental defense to eradicating slavery, from access to capitol to the right to due process.
Accompanying the interviews are a powerful series of portraits by world-renowned photographer Eddie Adams. This is his first book, representing two years of crisscrossing the globe to make these deeply felt and insightful images of courageous individuals, including the internationally celebrated, such as Vaclav Havel, Baltasar Garzón, Helen Prejean, Marian Wright Edelman, and Nobel Prize Laureates the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Oscar Arias Sánchez, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, José Ramos-Horta, and Bobby Muller. But the vast majority of the defenders are unknown and (as yet) unsung beyond their national boundaries, such as former sex slave and leading abolitionist Juliana Dogbadzi of Ghana, domestic violence activist Marina Pisklakova of Russia, mental disability rights advocate Gabor Gombos of Hungary, and more than thirty others.
Speak Truth to Power is accompanied by a major exhibition opening at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., then traveling nationally, beginning in January 2001 at the Newseum, New York. The authors also plan a fully integrated Web Site as well as an education and advocacy campaign by Amnesty International.
In addition, a theatrical presentation, written by Ariel Dorfman, based on the stories featured in the book, will be performed by internationally known actors, including Glenn Close, Edward James Olmos, Sigourney Weaver, Alfre Woodard, and others, opening at the J. F. Kennedy Center, September 19, 2000.
Customer Reviews:
Powerful and frightening.......2006-12-27
In the interst of full disclosure, I have not read through this book in its entirety. Nor to I contemplate doing so soon. The perils faced by the men and women who work for justice are often too hard to read in large doses. The savagery of the human heart is grotesque and seemingly insurmountable. Yet men and women of good will, as beautiflly told in this book, find the courage and strength to look into the face of evil and tell it "No."
The stories are taken from all over the world -- the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. They tell of the lonely struggle of those who seemingly cannot stop themselves from pursing freedom and dignity for their fellows. The stories are simultaneously ennobling, terrifying and challenging. Why are we not all fighters for the rights of our neighbors? WHy are we so often craven and complicit with oppresive powers? Why are so few able to face and withstand the fire of persecution?
As I said, "Speak Truth to Power" is not a light read. But the stories are inspiring and need to be told. For this, I thank Kerry Kennedy Cuomo for her introductions and her selection of material, and to Eddie Adams for the stark and powerful images of the men and women who raise us as a species above the level of beasts.
Excellent, touching reading.......2001-12-28
I bought this book for the sole purpose of a class where I was required to do some outside reading. This book was on our recommended reading list. I read the entire book, only one story was required. It was astonishing how these people change the world. I was moved by these stories.
almost religious in its power.......2001-09-06
The stories and photographs are deeply moving profiles of several of the most courageous people in the world. There are few terms to describe the total power, since I turn to this work on many occasions to gain some inspiration.
For someone not immediately interested in the field of human rights, the work is probably not quite as affecting, as personal stories about those who are involved in human rights will be unlikely to move the unconcerned. "Speak Truth to Power" is essential sustenance for the converted.
Shallow Treatment of a Vital Subject.......2001-01-01
The people described in this book are true heroes, and their stories make me feel humbled and ashamed. But the book attempts to describe 50 different people. Each person gets 3-6 pages, and at least one of the pages is a photograph, leaving room for only a short, unsatisfying glimpse of each life story.
The flyleaf states that "'Speak Truth to Power' is accompanied by a major exhibition opening at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., then traveling nationally." It almost appears that the story is secondary to the photographs--a pity.
Stories of important and incredible strength and vision.......2000-12-25
This is an inspirational and important book. The biographical portraits of the human rights activists are compelling, and their stories shocking, infuriating, sad, and ultimately inspirational. These are amazing people - prevailing against enormous odds. You read it in awe of the subjects, and their often appalling stories. The black and white photographic portraits are respectful, serious, and appropriate. The one thing I would change about this book is its "coffee-table-book" presentation. It's not an "art" book, there is intensity of feeling and action in its stories, and so is really too important to browse. In my view the big (and expensive) format invites a sort of readerly casualness that is at odds with the subject. There is outsized courage in these stories, but a surfeit of human suffering and cruelty, too. I wanted to be able to take it with me, and the size of this book makes that impractical. So I hope that it will eventually be published in a more accessible format. Five Amazon stars for excellence in all ways but that one.
Book Description
The remarkable life story of the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda
Readers who were moved and horrified by Hotel Rwanda will respond even more intensely to Paul Rusesabagina's unforgettable autobiography. As Rwanda was thrown into chaos during the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, turned the luxurious Hotel Milles Collines into a refuge for more than 1,200 Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees, while fending off their would-be killers with a combination of diplomacy and deception. In An Ordinary Man, he tells the story of his childhood, retraces his accidental path to heroism, revisits the 100 days in which he was the only thing standing between his “guests” and a hideous death, and recounts his subsequent life as a refugee and activist.
Customer Reviews:
An Ordinary Man.......2007-09-23
Paul Rusesabagina is an ordinary man. He feels sadness and joy, fear and hope just like the rest of us. He is not a superhero in the ordinary sense of the word--he cannot fly, he does not have an agility belt, and he cannot scale walls. He is an ordinary man by all accounts, but in 1994 when the dark cloud of tense hatred between the Tutsis and the Hutus that had been brewing for decades in the small country of Rwanda erupted into a genocide that left eight hundred thousand dead, Paul Rusesabagina's actions as described in his biography An Ordinary Man were anything but ordinary.
Rusesabagina was born in a small village in the countryside in 1954. His mother was a Tutsi, and his father was a Hutu. According to Rwandan tradition of heritage passing through the father's bloodlines, Rusesabagina was considered a Hutu as well. Rusesabagina's father was his inspirational role model growing up, and his philosophy that "kindness and justice did not know ethnicity" was embedded in Rusesabagina's actions later in life (12).
Rusesabagina learned early on in life to fight with his words, not with his fists. He found that by speaking to people face to face, he could connect on some level, and convince them not to do him harm. This technique worked with schoolyard bullies, and later on with murderous, fanatical generals. Rusesabagina found work at the hotel Mille Collines, and eventually became manager of its sister hotel Diplomates.
After the plane carrying President Habyarimana was shot down, the extremist radio station RTLM began to use powerful diatribes to convince Hutus that it was their duty to murder the Tutsi "cockroaches." Rusesabagina, a moderate Hutu with a Tutsi wife, was able to negotiate, bribe, and flatter those carrying out the murders into sparing the lives of the 1,268 refugees that had fled to the hotel Mille Collines. The world turned a blind eye to the genocide and for a long seventy-six days, Rusesabagina had only himself and his words to save his family and the refugees from certain death. It is estimated that about five people were brutally murdered every minute. Rusesabagina managed to save approximately four hours worth of people. Eventually, he and the refugees were evacuated. Rusesabagina and his family moved to Belgium, where they reside to this day. In 1999, the movie Hotel Rwanda depicted his actions during this "dark bead" in Rwandan history.
This is one of the most remarkable books that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It's so morbidly fascinating that even though at several times I felt physically ill, I was unable to put it down. Rusesabagina has a special skill as an author, and is able to paint an accurate and horrifying picture of the events that occurred, but at the same time is able to insert his whole-hearted and stubborn belief in the "triumph of common decency" over evil (203). Rusesabagina is able to argue this in the face of heartache and bloodshed. He is even able to provide concrete examples of people in the book that hacked their neighbors with machetes but still had a drop of human kindness desperate for an excuse to show itself.
Rusesabagina unapologetically criticizes all the nations that ignored the genocide for far too long. Rusesabagina not only provides criticism but also possible solutions that could have staunched the bloodshed quickly and effectively in the genocide's early stages. He also provides an excellent rhetoric on how extremists were able to convince rational, calm people to take up machetes and kill their neighbors and friends. Rusesabagina is able to counter the extremist rhetoric with words of his own, and uses this same skillful mastery of words that saved so many from slaughter to narrate this fantastic and moving book.
There are very few weaknesses in An Ordinary Man. Yes, the gore that is described twisted my stomach and left me feeling tainted and disgusted with mankind. After reading too much, I was almost unable to continue, but then again the mass genocide of men, women and children is not supposed to be neat and digestible. The descriptions are meant to shock and sicken. At the end of the novel, I felt ultimately dissatisfied and furious with the abject lack of justice. But this is a specific tactic used to irk the reader, because justice has not occurred in Rwanda and murderers still walk the streets. There is little justice to be found in that, and there is no reason why Rusesabagina should candy coat the issue to make the reader feel better.
Rusesabagina leaves the reader feeling hungry for more knowledge of the Rwandan genocide. His book inspired me to do outside research on the Rwandan genocide, and all of the other humanitarian crises that have occurred since then. Rusesabagina believes he is an ordinary man because to him saving all of these people seemed the most normal thing to do, something every man ought to have done. His message is a simple message of hope, a message that every man has the capability to give a "Rwandan no" to evil (203). His book serves not only a testimony to what happened in the dark days of the Rwandan massacre, but also serves as a means of getting people to care. He cautions that if the world cannot overcome apathy, then the phrase "never again" will be "one of the most abused phrases" and the "greatest lies" of the time. The book leaves the reader with a sense of hope that ordinary men like Rusesabagina will continue to say "no" to evil and do these extraordinary things as if they nothing more than ordinary.
Inspiring Book, More Inspiring Man.......2007-07-25
This book was chosen by Middle Tennessee State University for their summer reading book, and being a student there I decided to jump in with all the freshmen and read it as well. I'm excited that he will be speaking at our convocation ( our program to start off the year.)
The thing that interested me most about this book is that he knew not to expect much from his country. He had pride, and he had hope for a better future, but he knew better than to expect anything more than the current situation.
This book is definitely something to be read by those who are very involved in world politics, sociology, and psychology. Rusesabagina delves into each one with vigor, and I very well believe he could be a professor in any one of these concentrations.
I am proud to say that I share the world with people such as Rusesabagina.
A Required Reading for All Humans.......2007-05-30
How many tragedies would be averted if we studied world history and learned from the mistakes made by others? Rusesabagina offers a poignant, yet easy-to-read, cautionary tale of the danger of prejudice, hatred, and group think. I am purchasing this book and will encourage my sons to read it when they are older (they are only in elementary school now) so that they can be on guard against the evils that are possible in our human race.
This book has challenged me to live outside my little world of t-ball games and PTO meetings. I learned the power of ignorance can cost lives and affect generations to come. I will no longer live with my head buried in the sandbox, but will raise my children to have concern and compassion for all human beings, not just those who look like them.
A more apt title: "The Most Extraordinary Man".......2007-05-09
I'm in full agreement with those reviewers here that call Paul Rusesabagina's book "required reading" and a "lesson in leadership." I'm sure all my fellow reviewers would agree that - the author's humble and unassuming nature aside - the subject of 'An Ordinary Man' is, in fact, the most extraordinary man.
'An Ordinary Man' is more than just another take on 'Hotel Rwanda.' Mr. Rusesabagina and his co-author, Tom Zoellner, spend about 75 thoughtfully considered pages setting the backdrop to the conflict. They cover the politics of Tutsi and Hutu, the country's previous flashpoints ("like beads on our national necklace"), the role of radio's RTLM in fomenting the violence, and the author's own personal history - specifically, how he rose from his humble beginnings to his role as manager of the Milles Collines and its sister hotel the Dimplomates.
Mr. Rusesabagina summarizes his approach and his successes as follows (this is so compelling, I feel it worth stating here):
"I was good-natured fellow with the guests who came into the hotel, no matter if they were good friends or odious hate mongers. This was my nature. There are very few people with whom I could not sit and enjoy a glass of cognac. Except in extreme circumstances it rarely pays to show hostility to people in your orbit. And so when evil dropped by for a drink I was able to have a conversation. I could find its weakness and seek out its soft spots. I could see the vanity and the insecurity and even the ghost of common decency inside the minds of the killers that would allow me to save lives. I could quietly flip evil's assets against itself. What happened at the Milles Collines was the most extreme form of pragmatism. We would go to any length and do whatever it took to save as many lives as possible. That was the basic ideology. That was the only ideology."
Extraordinary stuff.
Lessons in Leadership....and Humility.......2007-04-20
By the time I was halfway through Paul Russesabagina's An Ordinary Man, I knew two things. 1. The Movie Hotel Rwanda tells a tiny fraction of his story, and 2. I have never done anything hard in my life.
Russabagina's 100 days in the Spring of 1994, when he cared for his Family and over 1200 refugees and employees during the Rwandan genocide, may be the single greatest leadership event of the 20th century. Students of leadership will certainly balk at that comment, but not after they read this compelling autobiography. I thought that I was reading an account of one mans experience, but I found myself taking notes on life, leadership, communication, and the complexities of good and evil from a master teacher. Have a pen and paper nearby before you dig into this one.
With much of the book dedicated to his life before and after the genocide, his insights to life make it obvious that Russesabagina would be an extraordinary soul even if he hadn't been through the horror that was Rwanda in those days.
Another book has been added to the "Must Read" list.
Average customer rating:
- RACHEL CORRIE WAS INSIGHTFUL AND SAW THE FUTURE "CLEARLY.": RACHEL DEFENDED THE PERSECUTED WITH "NON-VIOLENCE." LIKE GHANDI DID
- Good book about a misguided girl
- Great book!
- RACHEL CORRIE: GREATEST AMERICAN HERO THIS ENTIRE MISERABLE MILLENIUM
- Better Writing than Expected
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My Name Is Rachel Corrie
Alan Rickman
Manufacturer: Theatre Communications Group
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Book Description
"A powerful, thought-provoking and deeply moving piece of theatre."-
Daily Telegraph
"Theatre can't change the world. But what it can do, when it's as good as this, is to send us out enriched by other people's passionate concern."-
Guardian
I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls. You just can't imagine it unless you see it. And even then your experience is not at all the reality . . . [due to] the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. I am allowed to see the ocean.-Rachel Corrie
On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old American, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip as she was trying to prevent the demolition of the Palestinian homes.
My Name is Rachel Corrie is a one-woman play composed from Rachel's own journals, letters, and e-mails-creating a portrait of a messy, skinny, articulate, Salvador DalÃ-loving chain-smoker (with a passion for the music of Pat Benatar), who left home and school in Olympia, Washington, "to support Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israel's military occupation." The piece premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre, with an award-winning, sold-out run, before its transfer to the West End.
Customer Reviews:
RACHEL CORRIE WAS INSIGHTFUL AND SAW THE FUTURE "CLEARLY.": RACHEL DEFENDED THE PERSECUTED WITH "NON-VIOLENCE." LIKE GHANDI DID.......2007-10-02
This young lady brutally murdered by an Israeli soldier, was very aware of what was truly going on in "The Palestinian Holocaust" that still is ongoing today. This book is a book of a true "American Hero." Her heroic death must not be in vain, but give courage to all to stand up to the racist atrocities being perpetrated in the world today. The brutal savagery and humiliation against the women, children and men of Palestine is one such, present day "Holocaust." Rachel Corrie had incredible foresight for someone so young. Her cause is now proven and backed by some of the greatest human beings and scholars on this earth: Former President Jimmy Carter has gotten the same message Rachel was getting out to the world in his present best-seller: "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." In another new best-seller "THE ISRAEL LOBBY, AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY," by John J. Mearsheimer (of U. of Chicago) and Stephan M. Walt (Harvard), clearly shared young Rachel's view that the savage and horrific treatment of the Palestinian People and "their" lands, was not good for Palestinians, Israeli's, and Especially for America's Safety and Reputation to the World. The list seems endless, especially today, proving and backing Rachel's heroic mission. May she rest in peace. Her parents must be so proud that Rachel tried to help the oppressed and brutally occupied people of Palestine. Rachel Corrie, be proud as your message of justice is being carried on by the great authors mentioned and many more.
Just something to think about readers: Be careful or take great caution with amateur reviews that try to distort Rachel's pure and humane message. Whose words do you give more weight to, a reckless, insensitive, amateur reviewer, or some of the notable icons and scholars mentioned. Yes, everyone is entitled to an opinion,(that's what makes AMAZON the best) but some spend years researching specialty topics and are more up to speed - weigh everything. Do Former President, and probably todays greatest humanitarian, Jimmy Carter's words have weight and substance? What about other great and acclaimed scholars such as Professor John J. Mearsheimer, who is the Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the Univ. of Chicago. Add, Professor Stephen M. Walt, who is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Who do you believe? I leave that rhetorical question to you.
Rachel Corrie and her beautiful messages in her writings, this book, and her heroic and tragic death keep her lagacy and message of justice alive. Now, more than ever, notable people and scholarly authors are writing an array of necessary books supporting Rachels cause and, important message. A message that, finally, is getting to Americans,i.e., The horrific plight of the Palestinian peoples. Rachel, the world will not forget that you died for the justice of the Palestinians. Rachel's life should be a academic course in and of itself. Rachel was a true martyr. Read Rachel and be inspired and moved forever....
Good book about a misguided girl.......2007-07-23
This is a tough review to write.
As to the book, it deserves five stars.
But as to Rachel Corrie, who was an American member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who traveled to the Gaza Strip during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, she brought about her own death when she was defending the wrong side.
The Al-Aqsa Intifada was started by Yasir Arafat when he refused to take the 99% of the West Bank that Ehud Barak offered him.
Arafat had to start the Al-Aqsa Intifada because if he did not, people would comes to terms with his own incompetence, arrogance, and greed. Which has all been documented since.
First off, Fatah, Hama and others, who Rachel defended, besides being anti-Israel, are anti-American.
Second off, these two organizations have killed innocent people, including many Americans.
For Rachel Corrie to defend these people is criminal at best, immoral at worst. Rather than defending terrorists, Rachel should have been defending the innocent Israelis.
She was killed when she tried to obstruct an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Caterpillar D9 armoured bulldozer operating in Hai as-Salam, a Palestinian area of Rafah, close to the border with Egypt, an area the IDF had designated a security zone.
Why was the bulldozer there? For security operations designed to uncover the network of smuggling tunnels connecting Egypt to the Palestinian side of Rafah - tunnels used by Hamas and other groups for smuggling weapons from Egypt in Gaza strip.
Let's see, illegal weapons are imported to kill innocents and Corrie wants to defend such people?
She brought about her own death.
Rachel Corrie was a beautiful person with a good heart. She was also misguided. That mistake took her life.
This is a sad tale about a good heart, who defended evil people.
Great book!.......2007-02-06
I think that this book has the ability to capture a person's attention on an emotional level as well as a political one. Rachel Corrie was a very profound writer, even as a teenager. In this book you get to experience her life the way that she did. She was a very special person and you can see that as you read this book. It was a tragedy the way she died, and I think that this book kind of does her memory some justice.
RACHEL CORRIE: GREATEST AMERICAN HERO THIS ENTIRE MISERABLE MILLENIUM.......2006-11-20
She stood with a bullhorn and a bright orange vest in front of a doctor's home protecting the children who lived there, unarmed.
The invader's armoured tank kept on coming, hitting her, and backing up over her to make certain she was dead.
But she wasn't. Her spine snapped, she died painfully hours later as she was stopped at the invader's "security" checkpoint.
As any decent human being she stood unarmed and defenseless to protect children's ancient homes from destruction and land grab, even to the ultimate consequences. Such morality and courage is very rare today and shines in such great fellow American heroes as Jean Donovan, Sister Ita Ford, Sister Maura Clark and Sister Dorothy Kazel.
But they were in the last millenium, raped and murdered by other US allies and organs. Rachel is now, a hero for our new millenium. Our only American hero.
Please read her words and weep, not for her, but for all the children who loses homes and lives to faceless, relentless immoral military aggression.
Better Writing than Expected.......2006-10-15
I read a lot of political websites and was very familiar with the story behind this book when I decided to catch the play at the Minetta Lane Theater.
What surprised me about this book was the quality of Corrie's writing itself. A lot of Corrie's detractors hate her passionately because of their support for Israel's policy against the Palestinians in Gaza but they should give this book a closer look.
"My Name is Rachel Corrie" is not strictly a piece of anti-Israel agit prop, although it is certainly that. It's also a very personal story of an American confronting the effect of her government's foreign policy in a part of the world most of us will never see, an emotional travelogue to the heart of the darkness of the American Empire.
Nobody, of course, would compare Rachel Corrie to Joseph Conrad (who hadn't even learned English by the age of 23). But the process of exploring the self by traveling to the margins of the empire is the same. Corrie feels a sense of dread and purposelessness in Olympia (a first world city, one of those "whited sepulchers" Conrad mentions) that becomes more and more urgent after 9/11 so she decides to travel to the Gaza Strip and become a partisan for one group of people the American and Israeli governments would simply like to see disappear.
To argue that she should have become an objective witness instead of an openly partisan activist is to miss the point. An objective witness stands above the people stuck in a war zone (think of Eddie Adam's famous photo of the VC guerilla being executed) and this wouldn't have allowed her to confront the power relationship that exists between Americans and people like the Palestinians. By getting involved, she was able to free that part of herself that all Americans feel closed off to by our hostile relation to the rest of the world.
And the remarkable thing is that she was quite aware of this. Compare the surrealistic little vignette about her time as a volunteer at a mental health center where she's accused by her clients of putting herself above them to the way the older Palestinian woman argues against taking money from rich Americans. "We're not a hotel." Rachel Corrie struggles to let these people speak for themselves, even while she's using them to explore herself.
In other words, even if you're opposed to Corrie's politics, this book is still worth reading. Maybe the writing itself should get 3.5 stars. But I gave it 5 simply because I was touched by the fact that this book allowed so villified a woman to speak for herself from beyond the grave.
Average customer rating:
- "Reads Like Fiction"
- Interesting and Infomative Read
- An Illuminating Read about an Imporant Historical Figure
- Very tedious, superficial
- An incredible account of an amazing life
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Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
Juan Williams
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
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Binding: Paperback
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Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It
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ASIN: 0812932994
Release Date: 2000-02-01 |
Amazon.com
Washington Post correspondent and TV commentator Juan Williams has produced an illuminating look at a true giant of 20th-century American politics. Williams retells the story of Thurgood Marshall's successful desegregation of public schools in the U.S. with his victory in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, followed by his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1967 for a 24-year term. But he also recounts how W.E.B. Du Bois, then the head of the NAACP, gave a cold shoulder to the younger Marshall (who eventually helped oust Du Bois from the organization), and describes the tug of war between Marshall and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as the mind games Lyndon Johnson played on Marshall before nominating him for the Supreme Court. Readers also learn about Marshall's relationship with his replacement, Clarence Thomas, which was surprisingly civil given their contrary views on affirmative action. Williams has captured many examples of Thurgood Marshall's heroism and humanity in this comprehensive yet readable biography of a complex, combative, and courageous civil rights figure. --Eugene Holley Jr.
Book Description
This New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1998, is now in trade paper.
From the bestselling author of Eyes on the Prize, here is the definitive biography of the great lawyer and Supreme Court justice.
Customer Reviews:
"Reads Like Fiction".......2007-04-30
As a review on the back cover states, this book truly "reads like fiction." It gives a fascinating perspective of his life, and although I've read other technical biographies and his opinions, lectures and decisions, I would recommend this as a "first read" for anyone studying Thurgood. You feel as if you know Thurgood after reading this, and knowing his personal background helps you understand his professional background. His role in black freedom is no less than that of Martin Luther King's. (And quite frankly I think he should be revered as such.) The realities of black history nauseate me, and I can't comprehend how people historically treated blacks -- but Thurgood fought, and he fought legally and intelligently. Our children need to learn more about Thurgood and his overcoming adversity and changing the history of our country.
Interesting and Infomative Read.......2005-02-09
As a white man from the deep south, it boggles my mind how a totally free republic could twist the best Constitution ever written to deny a class of people their freedom. Civil right, the Vietnam war, the 1960's in general fascinate me.
Mr. Williams book is particularly good at setting up how Justice Marshall came to his way of thinking. He learned early on how to play the game in the other man's (whites) territory. If you want to know how hard it was to operate during these times, with the threats and bigotry, I suggest this book. I think it is paramount for the younger people in today's society to understand the severity of the risk and opposition that people like Justice Marshall had to deal with. I think it would make them realize that even though progress still needs to be made, these individuals put their lives on the line to advance society to where it is today.
An Illuminating Read about an Imporant Historical Figure.......2005-02-09
Juan Williams' biography of Thurgood Marshall is a worthwhile read. Williams has a great sense of the dramatic story in this man's life and he firmly sets him in the historical context of a nation in turmoil. I went away from this book with a better understanding of Marshall's life, personality and importance in American History. Williams also does a very good job with contrasting Marshall's social and political opinions with those of civil rights leaders in the 60s and 70s, with whom he occasionally butted heads. Williams paints him as the feisty individual that he was but he also does not sugar coat his flaws and mistakes. For me, the most interesting aspects of the autobiography were the accounts of Marshall's trials and travels with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and his inexhaustible energy to confront the laws of the times. If you have any interest in learning about this man and his place both in history and in the Civil Rights Movement, defintely pick up this worthwhile book.
Very tedious, superficial.......2004-03-07
Maybe its unfair that I read this book after reading the spectacular autobiography of John Lewis, Walking in the Wind. However, I found that this book was too detached from the man. I did not come away from this book with a better understanding of this man than I did before hand. Thurgood Marshall is one of the most important people of 20th century America but you don't see why in this book.
The major problem with this book is its writing style which makes reading this book tedious. I found myself bored by page 200. Also, I believe the Brown decision is given 20 pages and his solcitor general appointment is given more.
If you want to learn more about this guy, study the cases of the era. Sweatt v. painter, Brown of course, etc. Marshall's personal life really is irrelevant towards understanding this man's accomplishments. I would not recommend this book.
An incredible account of an amazing life.......2001-08-25
This is one of the most wonderful books I ever read. Thurgood Marshall is one of the most dynamic figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Williams not only gives an excellent and engaging account of Marshall's life, he represents the time in a manner that easily imagined. I was not alive during this period of time, but reading Williams' book made me feel as though I had experienced it. So often, when an author truly likes and admires his subject, the work that results is biased and not well-rounded. You can tell when you are reading something that is one-sided and too tributory to be accurate. Williams' admiration for this great man shines through in his book; however, it is by no means a song to Marshall. Williams' is fair in his dedication to not only Marshall's courage and brilliance, but also his fallibility and humanity. This is what brings the history to life. When you finish reading this book, you will feel as though you know Thurgood Marshall.
Book Description
This book examines current human rights issues and shows how a broader understanding can be used to ground a form of practice that is central to social work, community development and broader human services. The argument extends the idea of human rights beyond the realm of theoretical analysis, and into the arena of professional practice and social action, using a critical theory perspective. Drawing on current debates about globalization, this book adds a vital new perspective to the promotion of international human rights.
Customer Reviews:
Black comedy.......2002-01-28
This book bordered on the surreal due to Sakharov's irony free style. He would describe some craziness involving KGB interference in his life or Soviet life in general and then suddenly break off to describe theoretical quantum physics for three pages. This juxtaposition between the irrational and rational makes the book unexpectedly comic at times.
Average customer rating:
- *Big on Impact - - MARTIN's WORDS RESONATE WITH RESULTS . . . *
- I Like This Book!
- Awesome Book!
- Martin's big words the life of Dr. Martin Luther King JR. By Doreen Rapport
- The rare little children's bio of Dr. King
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Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Doreen Rappaport
Manufacturer: Jump At The Sun
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0786807148
Release Date: 2001-09-04 |
Amazon.com
In this elegant pictorial biography of Martin Luther King Jr., author Doreen Rappaport combines her spare, lyrical text with King's own words for an effective, age-appropriate portrayal of one of the world's greatest civil rights leaders. From King's youth, when he looked up to his preacher father and vowed one day to "get big words, too," to his death at a garbage workers' strike ("On his second day there, he was shot. He died."), Rappaport imbues the story with reverence.
Acclaimed artist Bryan Collier depicts his subject with stunning watercolor and collage illustrations, balancing glorious recreations of stained glass windows with some of the more somber images of peace marchers and the famous bus that pitched Rosa Parks into the civil rights movement. A brief chronology and bibliography provide additional resources for readers. Here is an exquisite tribute to a world hero. (Ages 4 and older) --Emilie Coulter
Book Description
In this elegant pictorial biography of Martin Luther King Jr., authorDoreen Rappaport combines her spare, lyrical text with King's own words for aneffective, age-appropriate portrayal of one of the world's greatest civil rightsleaders. From King's youth, when he looked up to his preacher father and vowedone day to "get big words, too," to his death at a garbage workers' strike ("Onhis second day there, he was shot. He died."), Rappaport imbues the story withreverence.Acclaimed artist Bryan Collier depicts his subject with stunning watercolor andcollage illustrations, balancing glorious recreations of stained glass windowswith some of the more somber images of peace marchers and the famous bus thatpitched Rosa Parks into the civil rights movement. A brief chronology andbibliography provide additional resources for readers. Here is an exquisitetribute to a world hero. (Ages 4 and older) --Emilie Coulter
Customer Reviews:
*Big on Impact - - MARTIN's WORDS RESONATE WITH RESULTS . . . *.......2006-03-22
The awesome simplicity of Doreen Rappaport's text is perfectly complemented by the artistry of Bryan Collier's water colors and clever collage in this stunning book. Their talents combine to make one weep.
"Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that."
Dr. King grew from boyhood immersed in love, and on August 28, 1963, his words carried the length of the Mall in Washington D.C., and to all the citizens and the world. The words resonated with integrity and passion and Old Testament cadences. I, too, stayed with little children at home but was filled with gratitude and an inescapable sense of History . . . proud to have family represent us in that throng marching for justice and peace.
"When the history books are written
someone will say there lived black people
who had the courage to stand up for their rights."
The illustrations are a treat - - a gift to linger over - - from the remarkable stained glass, simple to intricately defined - - to the torn fabric of our nation - - to the symbolic candles in the 'final frame.'
Reviewer mcHAIKU hopes we never forget Martin Luther King's MIGHTY WORDS, and our responsibility to a great man and his message.
I Like This Book!.......2006-01-26
I am Alex, a third grader in California. I like this book because it is fantastic. I learned to fight with words. It is a nice way to entertain yourself. You should buy it because I know you will like it a lot.
Awesome Book!.......2006-01-21
I was first introduce to this book in an undergraduate elementary education course. I purchased it instantly. I have used it with Kindergarten, second grade, third grade, and fourth grade. All the children love it! The illustrations are very unique and colorful. The story is on a level they can understand. It is not bogged down with too many details and is not to lengthy. I highly recommend this book, not only to educators and parents, but to the public in general. Everyone should read this book about the wonderful man who has influenced our society in such a profound and positive way.
Martin's big words the life of Dr. Martin Luther King JR. By Doreen Rapport.......2005-10-29
The book that I read was Martin Luther King Jr the book is good . On, 1/15/29 martin Luther king jr was born in Atlanta Georgia. On, June/18/1953 got married. In, 1968 he was shot and died. Martin Lther king jr, was a Chrishian. He is black. In church martin sang hymns. He read from the bible.
The rare little children's bio of Dr. King.......2005-03-02
When I first started reviewing children's books on Amazon.com I gave myself a long list of rules to follow. And one of those rules stated that I was not to read other reviews of a book on the site until AFTER I'd written my own review. I wanted my little writings to remain unsullied and pure, filled only with my own thoughts (which I obviously mistook to be brilliant) and feelings. After a while though I gave up on this rule. By and large (and this is not speaking for all reviews... just 90% of them) a review for a children's book goes something along the lines of "It was good, my four-year-old requests it every night, buy this book, etc.". Nothing too shocking or revealing. So I grew lazy. I started reading other reviews of picture books long before I sat down to actually write a review of my own. Just moments ago I went to do the same thing for the beautiful picture book, "Martin's Big Words". This book was on my list of must-reads because it had garnered itself a Caldecott Honor years before. So I went to the appropriate Amazon.com page (much as you are now) and read the first review on the list. At the time, it was an unassuming July 18, 2002 review entitled, "There's Something Wrong Here...". I read the review. I digested the review. And I came to the inescapable opinion that the points raised in the review were good ones. Ones that I should consider, dare I say, in my OWN review. This is unprecedented. Never has a review for a book, a children's book, really hit home for me like this one did. So to that mysterious reader who thought to make a point back in 2002, I commend you. And to myself, a mental whipping for breaking my own rules. It's a hard act to follow, but I've a point or two of my own to make and I'm gonna make `em.
Now as a children's librarian I get a whole heaping helpful of small children coming in around January 17th (or just before) requesting books on Martin Luther King Jr. For the older children, such requests are usually easy enough to fulfill. But for little ones with short attention spans and even shorter vocabularies, the choices are limited. Fortunately, there's, "Martin's Big Words". A beautiful encapsulation of the life of the great man, the book shows Martin as a child, first encountering the insanity of segregation. We see him grow up and preach a gospel of love and acceptance. Following this are small looks at the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, civil rights marches, and his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. Finally, while marching with striking garbage collectors (a fact not often mentioned in children's biographies of King), he was shot and killed. Says the book at the end, "His big words are alive for us today".
The book is stunning to look at, you know. The endpapers consist of pane after pane of brown, peach, amber, and umber stained glass. Taken together, the stained glass appears to be a variety of different skin tones all working together to make something beautiful. Using collage, illustrator Bryan Collier peppers his unique style with symbolic images (such as four lit candles placed in remembrance of the girls killed in the Sixteenth Street Baptist church). In the rest of the book, Collier's images leap off the page. They're bright, colorful and eclectic. Combined with author Doreen Rappaport's elegant eloquent narrative, children get a full understanding of the courage and greatness behind Dr. King's life and actions.
So what about the complaints of this book? Let's examine them fully. First of all, one criticism is that in the image of the civil rights march there are thirteen men on display, none of whom are either white or female. This is true. And it is a little odd. Not don't-buy-this-book odd. Just why-did-the-illustrator-make-that-choice odd. From looking at the picture I can only assume that Collier was working off a snapshot of a portion of a march from the past and didn't notice that it was a bit skewed. The other criticism of the book is that whites are only portrayed as evil rednecks that want to kill Dr. King. I dunno. The book says plenty of things about diversity and the coming together of the races. As for the lack of positive white images, I admit they're not present in this particular book. However, the world is filled to overflowing with books that DO present positive images of white people. As a white person myself, I'm sick to death of 'em. And I'd gladly exchange four or five hundred such books for a single one that was half as beautifully illustrated and written as "Martin's Big Words".
So yeah, the book has a flaw here or there. But it also fills a need. However important you deem it that your children see positive images of whites during the Freedom Marches is your prerogative. But don't pass "Martin's Big Words" by because it fails to fully display the diversity of the 60s in your eyes. It's a great book with a great message. It's also one of the few King bios that'll capture your seven-year-old's attention for longer than a minute. A great addition to any library and a necessary purchase for anyone who wants to teach their small child about a magnificent man.
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