The long-awaited first installment of Henry's History has finally arrived and, advertising hype aside, it is an event. Beginning with the call from Richard Nixon in 1969—ironically, while Kissinger was lunching with Nelson Rockefeller—that brought him into national prominence, and ending with the signing of the Paris accords on Vietnam in 1972, this segment inevitably centers on the Vietnam War, with side-trips to Moscow and China. Much attention will be paid to the nuts and bolts of negotiations between the U.S. and North Vietnam, the beginnings of détente, the secret mission to Peking, and the Mideast maneuvers of the period, as well as to Kissinger's profiles of colleagues and of Nixon. But one of those profiles may provide a clue to this maze of words; in speaking of then-Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, Kissinger notes that Laird would raise a host of issues in order to camouflage the main issue on which he wanted to prevail in inter-departmental wrangling. Kissinger's appreciation of Laird's bureaucratic acumen may be reflected in the massive scale of this book, fully 1500 pages in all. But the layers of meetings, memoranda, and reflection can't hide its basic value; this is one of the great documents of today's amoral, antidemocratic political manipulation. Kissinger claims, for instance, that he originally intended to maintain the structure of the National Security Council as he found it, but that Nixon, suspicious of the Foreign Service, insisted on strengthening the NSC as his instrument. Later—in reference to presumed disagreements between him and Nixon over the Christmas bombing of Hanoi in 1971—he claims disingenuously that "a Presidential Assistant soon learns that his only strength is the President's confidence"; but the intervening 1450 pages have shown us a Kissinger who knew how to institutionalize his power, and who, in the end, outmaneuvered even Richard Nixon. Kissinger's amorality is apparent from the start, as he never questions the propriety of accepting a position with the Nixon Administration after extolling the virtues of Rockefeller; the only question was which position to go for. Later, he could claim that "Cambodia was not a moral issue." But the greatest example may be Chile, where Kissinger justifies covert actions against Allende because his election was based "only" on a plurality—and, in any event, "was a challenge to our national interest," solely on the basis of his Marxist ideology. For Kissinger, values are ideology, power is truth. Though he wrings his hands over the "poor Cambodians" and those killed in Vietnam, his commitment was to American international "credibility" and effectiveness. For those not snowed by the erudition and charm, then, this is a fundamentally important book.
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1979
ISBN: 1451636431
Page Count: 2155
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1979
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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