Book Description
The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry
Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
Customer Reviews:
Disturbingly Good Book.......2007-09-18
Although I found this book to be written about very disturbing subject matter, I also found it to be very well written and compellingly readable. The mother of Kevin chronicles the ongoing crisis situation of an upwardly mobile New York couple and their decision to start a family. Dire consequences follow when their first child is nearly 16. The "narrator," in a series of letters to her huband reveals what happened with tantalizing glimpses of her life at present and the life of her family in the past.
Shriver also makes sly yet poignant commentary on American culture throughout the book, and it really works in this context, not ever coming across as condemning or preachy. She writes what is real, and gives life to her characters in the suburban, upper-class environment they live in.
I don't want to give too much of this book away, but Shriver does an excellent job with this storyline. This is sophisticated writing with incredible character development and a great story that actually has meaning, something that seems to be lacking in so much popular literature of the day.
A Chilling, Riveting, Brilliant Page Turner.......2007-09-16
This is one of the best books I've read in a while and I read everything! It is riveting, creepy, intelligent, and profound. I just devoured it. It's one of those stories that stays with you long after you finish the last page. This was my first book of Lionel Shriver's and I can't wait to read more of her stuff. Great book!
Excellent, Disturbing Read.......2007-09-14
A Novel, a story - that's what I had to keep telling myself. One that stays with you. The Negative to "My Sister's Keeper" - just as haunting.
Brilliant and compelling.......2007-09-04
This book held my interest all the way through even though parts of it could have been a bit more condensed. Kevin sent chills up my spine.
I found it very difficult to sympathize with his mother, but I also found it difficult not to examine my own style of parenting as compared to her style and her husband's.
I think the book was far superior to Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult.
Mesmerizing, hauntingly so...........2007-08-27
The novel is based upon a series of letters that the protagonist, Eva, writes to her husband, wanting to understand what went wrong with Kevin, what made Kevin do what he did. The letters are truly mesmerizing in a horrible/haunting sort of way. I was reminded of Lovely Bones, where the horror of the act that Kevin committed is not as terrible as you think it might be, that you can stomach it if only because you want to understand how it came about.
Eva is by her own admission, not the best of mothers. Still her letters are so well written, at times the word choice so exquisite, the stories she tells so commanding, that you pull back and think 'this is an intelligent woman' and you admire her and wish you could know her. Other times you despise her and want to shake her and say 'how could you pit yourself against him all the time, be reasonable' . In the end I felt only pity for her, she obviously didn't realize what she had when she had it and she failed to recognize the warning signs. So she confines herself to her own little hell, and in the end comes to understand more about her son and herself - perhaps more than she ever really planned too.
Shriver is a dark writer - by her own admission (at the end of the book we get a conversation with Shriver about Kevin, about books she recommends...). She is very convincing at portraying Eva as a successful woman who occasionally suffers from insistent whining...ah, but such is the dilemma of first person novels... and Eva is perhaps sometimes too much the villain, but then hind sight is always better than foresight...Still this is brilliantly written and well worth reading, a letter at a time. I could even forgive Shriver's use of "mobile" instead of cell phone (apparently, Shriver has been residing in London for a very long time). Shriver's character, Eva, most likely would have used the word 'mobile' rather than 'cell', if just to distance herself from the general rabble so I let it slide, figuring it to be more in keeping with Eva's character, although at first I felt it a grating mistake for one who is so bent on being right and supposedly American.
A haunting tale that captures your attention and holds it through 400 pages wanting to know how it ends...
Amazon.com
"The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence.
Book Description
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion,
Blood Meridianbrilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
Customer Reviews:
What's Lies Beneath Man's Thin Veneer of Humanity.......2007-09-19
Mr. McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' examines the nature of man when the fragile constraints of civilization have been broken. To accentuate that all the horrors in 'Blood Meridian' area contained within each of us, Mr. McCarthy sets his novel in the land of our national myth, the 'Wild West.' Not Hollywood's 'Wild West' mind you, but one recognizable as something closer to what reality must have been. That's the truely frightening part.
As everyone notes, the violence starts early in the book and never lets up. Mr. McCarthy forces the reader to look, forces us to not look away. This horrific violence is the vehicle McCarthy uses to move the novel from on his pages to within our own minds. Once we follow the characters across the societally self-imposed border and left 'civilization' and 'humanity' behind, Glanton and 'The Judge' become OUR king and OUR high priest. As 'The Kid's' humanity slowly withers, we recognize the degradable nature of our own humanity. 'The Kid' is the reader. 'The Kid' is the individual. If we are honest with ourselves, McCarthy tells us that when faced with humanity's ever-present interior horrors (represented perfectly by 'The Judge') we are just as helpless.
That is the true horror of 'Blood Meridian.' Not the blood. Not the guts. Not even the dead babies. The horror of 'Blood Meridian' is that at any time we are a one choice, one action away from 'The Judge' and the constraining force of 'civilization' is tenuous at best. And once that thread of humanity has broken...
Mr. McCarthy's language paints a vivid picture but can be difficult to wade through. His word choice can be archaic and obscure, but no word (or sentence) in 'Blood Meridian' ever seems out of place. 'Blood Meridian' makes you work to understand what's going on. The 300 page book seemed much longer to me. Perhaps its because I reread passages. More likely it was because Mr. McCarthy can construct two or three paragraphs that give you the impression that you've seen every detail of a hundred mile journey, all within half of a page.
'Blood Meridian' is not a pretty book or one that fits within today's 'entertainment' consumer's expectations. 'Blood Meridian' is Hieronymus Bosch, not Claude Monet. Mr. McCarthy has created a novel sublime in its ability to frighten and disgust you. Don't let that dissuade you. It's well worth the effort.
Wordiness galore!.......2007-09-12
I think Cormac McCarthy is one of those authors who write for editors and english teachers more than the reader. How pretentious. There is unnecessary wordiness to this novel. It distracts from the story, which is pretty good. His sentence structure is such that I keep thinking that there are much easier ways to say something, kiddo! One reviewer compared him to Hemmingway, but I must disagree. Yes, they both fancy the compound sentence, but Hemmingway wrote in a simpler elegant style. And you can be a good writer and not have to constantly use obscure nouns and reversed adjectives and odd pronoun usage and...oops, caught myself in a compound sentence.
He's heard this criticism before. And maybe it registered because The Road is much better read. Short sentences aren't bad, mi amigos.
Obsessive.......2007-08-26
This is only the second Mccarthy novel I have read,I might try one more before I give up.
There's no doubt that McCarhty is a gifted writer, but I don't share his obsession with violence and inhumanity, maybe that's his point, and in truth, looking at the world today I wonder if we've made any progress at all. Nevertheless I can't abide the literary vision here. I think its a waste of my time to read something that tells me what I already know and pounds in the pointlessness of life, as the authour sees it, till I am sick to death of it, I know there's more to life than this, and I quit the book. I couldn't read anymore after less than a hundred pages. I knew the whole thing would be just more of the same so why bother?
I don't think McCarthys a great writer, he dwells too much on the irredeemably demonic in man. He's an interesting writer, his style, his antique knowledge, his ornate vocabulary, but it takes more than this to make a writer with a response to life that is worthy rather than an indulgence in the depths of horror humanity is capable of. If you want the classic depiction of this, but also with reflection and thoughtfulness about man's plight than all you have to do is read, "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.
1 doesn't begin to describe this waste of time.......2007-08-20
I listened to about half of the audio book and negative adjectives fail. I tried to tolerate it, I tried to give it much more effort than I felt it deserved or would ever reward me with just a experience that was better than listening to my own internal dialogue. The only thing I could even begin to care about was the animals. There wasn't a character that I was even remotely interested in, I certainly wasn't even the least bit curious as to what happened to them, let alone care about even enough to wish their demise. The evil, amorality of the characters hold no interest, no fascination and is very soon boring instead of evocative of anything. There is nothing inventive, interesting or otherwise at all compelling. You don't care about the Kid or the characters that surround him, you don't care about the people they kill, you don't care that the killings are brutal, and often indiscriminate. You don't care if they kill 10, 100 or 1000 Indians, Mexicans, by-standers or who or whatever ever. The violence is not fascinating, not shocking, not even numbing. In the end it's just repetitive and boring.
Read the phone book, read the want ads, don't bother with this, ever, for any reason.
Bloody Hell.......2007-08-13
Ultimately a lot of my problems with this are the same as when I read "Cities of the Plain" recently so I'll just cut and paste from there to save time.
I suppose McCarthy's writing is fine if you enjoy the Hemingway style, which I don't. I'm not sure what's so beautiful about sentences that go "He shaved and showered and toweled off and got dressed." Seems kind of ugly actually. Reminds me of the stories I wrote in junior high. But he has a Pulitzer and a National Book Award and I don't. Take that!
A few of the author's style choices left me more than a little confused. Let's go down the list:
1. McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks so sometimes it's hard to know when someone is talking and when McCarthy is narrating.
2. McCarthy is adverse to using proper names so you end up with confusing pronoun use. In one case he made it sound like wolves had built a fire. This is especially a problem when the author starts out a new section or chapter with "He" and then we have to wait a few sentences to figure out the "He" in question.
3. Most aggravating of all is that a lot of characters speak only Spanish and McCarthy puts their lines IN Spanish. So tough luck if you don't know any Spanish. I wasn't too bad off since I took a few Spanish classes in high school, but some terms still threw me--and I didn't have a Spanish-English dictionary handy. If this were a movie we'd have the benefit of subtitles but in a novel we have to try and interpret the gist of it from the character's actions, sort of like playing charades.
Here's a new one though:
4. The central character (supposedly) is "the kid" but after joining up with "the judge" and Glanton "the kid" steadily disappears until he's just an anonymous part of the gang as they terrorize Mexico and the southwestern United States. A good quarter or more of the book hardly mentions "the kid" at all until he resurfaces at the end for the final confrontation with "the judge."
As the reader I think I really missed out by another of McCarthy's habits of never getting into the character's minds. Since the characters are so opaque and the central character disappears, the final confrontation between "the kid" and "the judge" doesn't make a lot of sense. I never did understand why "the kid" didn't just off "the judge" when he had the chance, a direct result of "the kid" vanishing and never having any idea what he was thinking.
But suffice it to say if you enjoyed "The Road" then this is pretty much the same thing. A group of people going through a bleak wasteland full of blood, gore, and death. Only in this case it's "the kid" and the gang inflicting most of that blood, gore, and death in order to collect Indian scalps--or Mexican scalps will do in a pinch. Pretty much the whole book is them going from place to place killing people or getting chased off by people trying to kill them. If you're looking for anything happy or hopeful or any of that, you better keep on walking.
That is all.
Book Description
Written teen to teen as a first-person narrative, this is not a book about the Columbine shootings - instead, it's a story of faith, told in Rachel's own words. The book includes first person narratives, journal entries, drawings from Rachel's diary, and notes from her parents and friends at Columbine High School. Additionally, "me pages" (what makes me angry, what I'm aftraid of) encourage teens to explore issues central to their lives and faith. Highlighting Rachel's faith journey from the time she became a Christian, through her joys and doubts, her hopes and dreams, this story is a triumphant testimony that teens will treasure.
Customer Reviews:
engrossing book.......2006-11-13
I highly recommend this book. Based on her real journals, you feel by the end of this book like you knew Rachal Scott personally. Even though it's not the exact journal entries, Beth Nimmo, Rachal's mother collaborated with the writer, and you get the sense that Rachal's true character was captured. This book brings to life a girl mature and inciteful beyond her years. I was humbled and deeply moved by her total commitment to living out her faith in Christ. I appreciate especially her honesty. Her story brings to life the loss of such a beautiful young woman. You don't need to be a teenage girl to read this book, but every teenager should read it.Thank you Beth for allowing us to walk along side her in her last years.
Great for teenage girls.......2006-06-30
I bought this book for my 16 yr. old daughter and her mind set has changed. After reading this book, all on her own she started journaling and recently asked to be baptised. I thank GOD for Rachel Joy Scott and her parents.
Inspiring.......2006-02-24
This book will change the way you view life and its meaning. I also recommend you read Rachels Tears as well!
Great gift.......2005-12-22
I bought this for a teenager I know and she loved it. She is a quiet teen but she made sure she brought this book to church to show it off. It is a thought-provoking book, very well written.
Deserves more stars * * * * * * * * *.......2005-07-13
When I first began reading this book it was right when I first wanted to give my life to God. This book helped me sooo much. It's full of inspirational quotes and accounts of a true christian. Her story really had an impact on my life. I bought this book for a few of my friends so that they could also read her incredible story. If you read any book it should be this one!
Book Description
On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, walked into their school and shot to death twelve students and one teacher, and wounded many others. It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history.
Few people knew Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris better than Brooks Brown. Brown and Klebold were best friends in grade school, and years later, at Columbine, Brown was privy to some of Harris and Klebold's darkest fantasies and most troubling revelations After the shootings, Brown was even accused by the police of having been in on the massacre--simply because he had been friends with the killers.
Now, for the first time, Brown, with journalist Rob Merritt, gets to tell his full version of the story. He describes the warning signs that were missed or ignored, and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates and explores what it might have been that pushed these two young men, from supposedly stable families, to harbor such violent and apocalyptic dreams.
Shocking as well as inspirational and insightful, No Easy Answers is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists, authorities, parents, and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests, the book offers no easy answers, but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today."If there is any solace to come out of a tragedy of the magnitude of the Columbine shooting, it is what lessons might be learned in its aftermath. With bravery, wit, and striking honesty, Brooks Brown and Rob Merritt allow us a glimpse into what led to that event, what happened afterward, and most importantly, why any community would be naive to think it might not happen to them, too. How thin is the line between a bully and a victim? Who is to blame, when a community is turned inside out? As No Easy Answers suggests, it may just be the community itself. And it offers up a question of that resonates after the last page is turned: What can you and I do to keep this from happening again? If you're a parent, read this with your child; if you're a teen, leave this on your parents' bedside table--and above all else, start the conversation too much of this world is unwilling to have." --
Jodi Picoult, author of the New York Times #1 bestselling novel Nineteen Minutes
Customer Reviews:
Great Book.......2007-09-01
I have Writen many papers on Columbine High School when I was in school. I have looked at web site, looked at all the information that I found I have spoken with people and authority's for my papers. Brooks Browns book told quite a bit that had never been told before that shows friendship and distructive behavior. It talks about how Dylan and Eric began their friendship, unless someone who was there in the library or in the school writes a book we will never know who said what. What happened we only have the accounts that have been told to others and their family's. This is a great book and if you want to know how Eric and Dylan started off this is the book for you.
Bullying and Teasing As Possible Causes of School Violence.......2007-05-22
"No Easy Answer" is a look at the Columbine massacre from the perspective of Brooks Brown, a friend of the two shooters. As a retired middle school teacher, I can tell you that the bullying and teasing described in this book does go on. This book is a page-turner that gives the reader a look at the sociology of the present-day high school. I highly recommend "No Easy Answers" for anyone interested in learning more about school shootings. I also recommend the young adult novel "Give a Boy a Gun" by Todd Strassor.
No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Columbine.......2007-03-14
This was a very interesting account by a young man who had some insights that few have of this most tragic event in our history. As a school administrator it was a wake-up call.
Learn the whole truth about the causes of Columbine.......2006-12-13
The Roman poet Virgil once wrote, "From a single crime, know the nation."
Brooks Brown, who knew both Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, gives a unique perspective on the root causes that may have led to the infamous Columbine massacre, a list that includes intense bullying, preferential treatment given to athletes and a culturally-ingrained intolerance for anyone deemed to be different from the status quo.
Detractors of both the book and the author seem to be entirely missing the point Brown makes in this book, i.e., the same sort of "bullying" behavior that one reads in the hostile comments left on the various reviews here are just the sort of thing that probably helped to perpetuate the hate and discontent felt at Columbine. When will people ever learn, one must ask?
All in all, this one is an excellent read and I highly recommend it for learning the whole truth behind the causes of the Columbine massacre.
You've Gone Way Over Your 15 Minutes of Fame Brooks.......2006-10-28
Forget the 13 who were murdered and all those wounded on April 20, 1999; forget the pain of their families; Forget Harris and Klebold; Forget them all because I have just realized the real victim of Columbine was Brooks Brown. It has to be so. I just read as much in 277 annoying pages.
I made a deal with myself awhile back. When I start a book I am committed to finishing it. This worthless waste of paper really tested my will.
Brown seems to have an exaggerated opinion of his 'role' in the lives of Harris and Klebold, the whole massacre in general as well as it's aftermath. And it seems that as time goes by he will do just about anything to keep his name 'out there' regarding this tragedy and that includes typing (I refuse to call it writing) this poorly planned book.
If anyone knows of an objectively written, well researched book on Columbine, drop me a line. The subject is incredibly interesting on so many levels, but unfortunately Brooks Brown doesn't touch on any of them.
Book Description
In 1915, under the cover of a world war, some one million Armenians were killed through starvation, forced marches, forced exile, and mass acts of slaughter. Although Armenians and world opinion have held the Ottoman powers responsible, Turkey has consistently rejected any claim of intentional genocide. Now, in a pioneering work of excavation, Turkish historian Taner Akam has made extensive and unprecedented use of Ottoman and other sources to produce a scrupulous charge sheet against the Turkish authorities. The first scholar of any nationality to have mined the significant evidencein Turkish military and court records, parliamentary minutes, letters, and eyewitness accountsAkam follows the chain of events leading up to the killing and then reconstructs its systematic orchestration by coordinated departments of the Ottoman state, the ruling political parties, and the military. He also probes the crucial question of how Turkey succeeded in evading responsibility, pointing to competing international interests in the region, the priorities of Turkish nationalists, and the international communitys inadequate attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice. As Turkey lobbies to enter the European Union, Akams work becomes ever more important and relevant. Beyond its timeliness, A Shameful Act is sure to take its lasting place as a classic and necessary work on the subject.
Customer Reviews:
Deliberately misguided.......2007-04-15
I have read the book thoroughly and found quite good in terms of the sources used and the consistency of the theme. However, I realized that the author deliberately does not touch some fields in order not to jeopardize his position among his Armenian employers. Firstly, He claims that the only thing Ottoman Armenians wanted was the Reforms; if the government had implemented the changes they agreed with Dashnak Party, It would have been no revolt whatsoever. He also claims that most of the revolts that took place in various towns in Anatolia were simply the resistance for the deportation decision. On the contrary, we clearly know that the motive was not a Reform demand. The motive was a demand that leads to and independent Armenian State within the Turkish territories. He also dismisses the Armenian terrorist activities within the empire in order not to justify the deportation. Fortunately, He tells every account about the wide support that was provided to the Russian army and Western powers by Armenians.
The other thing I have found quite interesting is that he hardly mentions how "genocide" took place. According to his writing, special organization was responsible for killing Armenians so Regular army was told not to interfere and most of the cases Armenians were massacred just out of the towns where they were living. That was it. How can you overlook something that is extremely important for your case even though telling every small political and administrative event that occurred during the period? I think if a court deals with this issue they have to find psychical evidence which is the bodies of 1.5 millions people across the country. Even if your family members were subjected a massacre, even other hundreds of other families claim to have been massacred. These do not prove that this was genocide as you can find similar stories on the other side.
I think the problem we have is that Armenian people are so convinced that genocide took place against them and we can change not their mind and we do not have to. But they have to accept that if injustice was done to them, Propaganda books or propagandists are not something that they can rely on. The truth is always exposed sooner or later. I would advise them (Armenia) to take Turkey to court, called International Justice Court, in Lahey in Switzerland to get a conviction and get on with their lives. That's why I do not find Armenians genuine on this subject. Why spent millions of dollars for propaganda and why not submit a petition to the Court.
Turkey is a beautiful country, big enough to embrace all kind of people and live in harmony as long as violence does not occur. When we look at the shore lines throughout Turkey we can easily claim that hundreds of thousands of people who originally were born outside of Turkey live in a peaceful environment which I envy as a person who live outside of Turkey.
Thanks for readin my opinions
An important work.......2007-02-19
This important work by a Turkish scholar and dissident examined not every detail of the genocide but the question of Ottoman policy and the Turkish regime's responsibility. The first third of the book examines the Ottoman policy towards minorities and the way in which Islam was blended into Turkish nationalism.
The second third of the book examines Turkish policy and culpability during the war and the genocide that stretched from 1915 through to 1921. The book establishes the fact that the Ottoman-Turkish state was responsible for planning the genocide, that they were not just 'local massacres' or an outcome of 'war' and 'chaos'. This is important for it lays the groundwork for the last portion of the book which examines attempts by the allied powers to bring the genocidaires to justice.
The last portion examines Kemal Ataturk and his post-war regime and its role in resolving issues of genocide and justice. In the end the Turkish state denied the genocide and not only that but worked hard to cleanse all the other minorities include the Greeks, the Pontic Greeks, the Assyrians and the Jacobites, along with the Kurds.
This is an important book and the author makes many important incisive comments and observations not found elsewhere.
Seth J. Frantzman
"What ever happened to Anatolia?".......2007-01-29
"A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility", Tanner Akcam, NY, Metropolitan Books, 2006. ISBN 10:0-8050-7932-7, HC, 376 pg., plus Preface 13 pg., Notes 88 pg., & an Index 17 pg.; 9 1/2" x 6 1/2". A 3rd book by Turk sociologist/historian translated by Paul Bessemer in 1999.
Akcam details the rise & fall of the Ottoman Empire, its racial, ethnic & religious makeup, & how, during its decline, Turkish Nationalism developed under "CUP" & of principals involved. It unfolds ghastly details of the Ottoman Empire's annihilation of the non-Muslims, largely Christian Armenians, but also Greeks & Kurds, etc. Its proclammatory targeted deporatations included use of the Baghdad to Berlin railway, death marches, mass shootings & beatins & drownings, & starvation. It details Allied Powers' secret pacts to divide up the Ottoman Empire to control trade in the Black & Meditterranean Seas via the Dardenelles. It concludes with attempts to formalize trials against officials who had contrived the Armenian Genocides (AG) & describes various obstacles & finals outcomes with amnesty for the majority. A triumvirate of "Young Turks, namely - Talat Pasha, Enver Pasha, Cemel Pasha & their ideologue Gokalp promoting "Turkification is nicely outlined.
Interestingly, I found no devices, events or acts Adolf Hitler used in his quest for a "final solution" that had not been used a decade earlier by these Turkish Muslims, & this includes concentration & work camps, pillaging, rape, tortures, mass drownings, digging one's own grave, & starvation. Hitler was a copy cat in his genocide, devising nothing new save a numbering system.
The read is good, at times tedious, but at all times explaining the complexity of the AG. Resolution of some unsettled goings on will never occur as the unfolding of this history is truly enigmatically complex, full of disingenuous conspiracies but demonstrates the pressing need to prosecute those guilty of crimes against humanity, i.e. the genocide & gendercides. Turkey steadfastly denies the AG, but it also had changed their official language C. 1922 so original records are largely confined to scholars. I believe the book is the most accurate accounting of the AG written to date.
Vital for understanding causes of the Armenian Genocide.......2007-01-10
In this important book the pioneering Turkish historian Taner Akcam makes his work on the causes of the Armenian Genocide available to those who do not speak German, the language of his most important previous book on the subject. Akcam, who for years has worked in Germany as well as more recently in the United States, is especially strong in explaining how Turkish nationalism grew increasingly radical before and during the First World War. This is a very important contribution to the growing literature on the subject, including Donald Bloxham's The Great Game of Genocide. A number of recent books such as Benjamin Lieberman's Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe, Michael Mann's Dark Side of Democracy, and Norman Naimark's Fires of Hatred, provide comparative discussion of the Armenian Genocide.
In his discussion of causes and consequences of genocide Akcam takes a somewhat similar chronological approch to Vahakn Dadrian, but this is still not exactly a comprehensive history of the subject. Peter Balakian's Burning Tigris is very good on American responses, but the world still awaits the first truly comprehensive and authoritative history of the Armenian Genocide.
first genocide of the 20th century.......2007-01-09
He has made a good start. I applaud Professor Akcam's revealing and objective look at one of the worst acts of outrage against humanity of the 20th century. Certainly the Armenian people bore the brunt of the inspeakable acts of violence directed against them by inhuman hordes of Turks who burning raping and pillaging. Unfortunately he leaves out the mass killing fields covered covered with the dust of hundreds of thousands of Greek and Assyrian Christians who predated the Muslim Turks by thousands of years.
I wish I could be hopeful for the day when Turks can face up to their dismal and violent past. I do not hold much hope of that as long as islam is the ideology of choice for them.
Average customer rating:
- Graphic SF Reader
- Blast From the Past
- Pretty scary and shocking near beginning
- pretty good
- Really complete
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X-Men: Mutant Massacre
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X-Men: X-Tinction Agenda
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X-Men: X-Cutioner's Song
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X-Men: Days of Future Past
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X-Men: Inferno
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X-Men: Mutant Genesis
ASIN: 0785102248 |
Customer Reviews:
Graphic SF Reader.......2007-09-03
One of the oustanding X-Men storylines. This collects all the appropriate X-Men and X-Factor and New Mutants and Thor and Power Pack issues that you need to make up the story. If you prefer color to the black and white version in Essential X-Men, this is the one that you should get. Wolverine vs Sabretooh, no holds barred. Lots of things change for the X-Men out of this story.
Blast From the Past.......2007-08-23
This is a good read for people with the case of nostalgia. Even though it was written by the great Chris Claremont it does have its moments were the story moves really slow. But on an up side this is a very cohesive storyline taking place in several books. Unlike Marvel titles today everything seems to fit together pleasently.
Pretty scary and shocking near beginning.......2005-12-21
So , I read this while living abroad but I am thinking about adding it to my collection. It is not better TPB then Dark Phoenix, but it is fast paced and has in your face beginning: a group of superpowered beings who are well trained begins to hunt Morlocks. Not scarier than Inferno but near; end of the book is little slower, but the beginning beats every good action/shocker movie, including Predator, Terminator etc. which were the law when I was the kid.
Anyway, if you like old school X-men, get Essential X-men (where you'll see how a new team of Wolverine, Collosus, Storm etc. was forged), Dark Phoenix Saga OR Essential X-men vol.2 , and then Mutant Massacre. I wouldn't reccomend latter to kids, there is too much cruelty.
SPOILER:
And yeah, if you think you hate Mr. S. after you read M.M. , get Further Adventures of Cyclops And Phoenix ... you'll feel for guy...
pretty good.......2003-08-20
in case you were wondering, this collection includes 10 issues:
Uncanny X-Men 210-213
X-Factor 9-11
New Mutants 46
Thor 373-374
Power Pack 27
technically an issue of daredevil also tied into this crossover, but it's not included here.
crossovers are always fun, but as another reviewer mentioned they tend to meander. the writers didn't seem overly concerned about keeping the crossover self-contained, so a lot of the comics bring up events that don't get resolved until after the events in the books contained here. most of the backstories are explained enough that newbie readers shouldn't be too clueless, although if you're new to the x-men you should start off w/ the essential x-men series.
highlights: great fight w/ psylocke, wolvie, and sabretooth; apocalypse assembling his four horsemen; angel getting overwhelmed by the marauders.
minor gripe: WHY does thor not have a beard on the cover when he does at the time of these comics??
Really complete.......2003-08-18
If you want complete stories, then you are not going to do much better. If you want to see the X-Men in a state of war, then this is a far better storyline than the X-Tinction Agenda. Lots of mutants, lots of fights, and lots of poignant moments, from the injuries that led to the creation of Excalibur and Archangel, to Psylocke joining the X-men, to the death of so many Morlocks. The inclusion of Thor and Power Pack was well-handled. This novel can not be more highly recommended.
Average customer rating:
- Truth told through the personal first-hand experience of a young victim
- A novel of the Armenian Genocide.
- Pass this book on to others-share it with the world.
- Forgotten Fire
- Historical, well written, and powerful
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Forgotten Fire (Readers Circle)
Adam Bagdasarian
Manufacturer: Laurel Leaf
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Amazon.com
Forced to watch his father escorted out of their lives by Turkish police, his brothers shot to death in their backyard, his grandmother murdered by a rock-wielding guard, and his sister take poison rather than be raped by soldiers, 12-year-old Vahan Kendarian abruptly begins to learn what his father meant when he used to say, "This is how steel is made. Steel is made strong by fire." Up until 1915, Vahan has lived a cosseted life as the son of a wealthy and respected Armenian man. But overnight his world is destroyed when the triumvirate of Turkish leaders, Enver Pasha, Talaat Bey, and Djemal Pasha, begins the systematic massacre of nearly three-quarters of the Armenian population of Turkey, 1.5 million men, women, and children. Soon Vahan is an orphan on the run, surviving by begging, pretending to be deaf and mute, dressing as a girl, hiding out in basements and outhouses, and even living for a time with the Horseshoer of Baskale, a Turkish governor known for nailing horseshoes to the feet of his Armenian victims. Time and again, the terrified and desperate boy grows close to someone--and loses him or her to an appalling, violent death. Through three years of unspeakable horror, Vahan is made stronger by this fire, and by perseverance, fate, or sheer luck, he survives long enough to escape to the safe haven of Constantinople.
Brutally vivid, Adam Bagdasarian's Forgotten Fire is based on the experiences of his great-uncle during the Armenian Holocaust. The absolutely relentless series of vile events is almost unbearable, but the quiet elegance of Bagdasarian's writing makes this a novel of truth and beauty. Parental guidance is strongly suggested for younger readers of this extraordinary, heartbreaking account. (Ages 14 and older) --Emilie Coulter
Book Description
In 1915 Vahan Kenderian is living a life of privilege as the youngest son of a wealthy Armenian family in Turkey. This secure world is shattered when some family members are whisked away while others are murdered before his eyes.
Vahan loses his home and family, and is forced to live a life he would never have dreamed of in order to survive. Somehow Vahan’s incredible strength and spirit help him endure, even knowing that each day could be his last.
Customer Reviews:
Truth told through the personal first-hand experience of a young victim .......2007-09-18
As a third generation Armenian-American with a family history which includes a similar set of horrific first-hand accounts of Turkish Muslim atrocities against my own kin, this historical recounting was hard to put down. For those in our 'modern' culture too arrogant to believe that history is relevant, this historical vignette relating to the well-documented massacre and abuse of 1-2 million Armenian Christians by Turkish Muslims rings absolutely true and hauntingly familiar to the scores of comparable historical atrocities inflicted by evil Islamic terrorists across Asia, Africa and the Middle East over the past 1300 years (in the past decade consider similar incursions in Sudan, Philippines, East Timor, Armenia, Lebanon, Israel, etc.). The linkage of Post-Christian 'pre-Nazi' German culture with Turkish Muslim allies in suppressing this truth back in WWI was recently brought shockingly to mind in September 2007 by the discovery of Al Queda-trained German Muslims preparing large scale bombing materials in Germany. Read this book and be informed as to the real, continuing, stakes on today's world stage where darkness and light continue to battle. The good news is that the Bible tells us that Jesus wins and reigns for eternity. Praise be to the true God of the Bible!!
A novel of the Armenian Genocide........2007-07-14
This book tells the story of the author's uncle who survived the Armenian genocide and lived to tell his relatives. It is a heart moving story of how a rich Armenian family died. The two survivors are a sister and a brother. This is the story of the brother. Few people remember the Armenian genocides since they took place either before World War I or during the war itself. One and a half million Armenians died in these events (there were several prior to WWI and the big one took place during the war). Although the story is set in eastern Turkey, one does not get a view of why the government ministers/soldiers perpetrated these massacres. The book shows how people were killed by evil men, a very simplistic explanation.
This is an interesting read. Although a novel, it is based on a true event and life. I am not sure it is really for grade school students, but could be taught to high school students.
Pass this book on to others-share it with the world........2007-05-31
I was speaking with a friend of mine when I mentioned a faux pas that I had made several years ago in an Armenian grocery, knowing that my friend is Armenian and knowing a little about the genocide of the Armenian people. He surprised me by telling me about this book and recommended it to me highly. I was further surprised when he told me his cousin wrote the book about his own father. Not wishing to go further into a private conversation (although I'm sure he'll consider me dopey for worrying about it), I bought the book and was amazed by the humanity of the writing, especially about such a heartbreaking chapter of the history of the human race. The most surprising aspect of this book is that there is no hate in it other than on the part of the Turks for the Armenians. I found it to be a wrenching and uplifting depiction of a heroic boy (a true hero, not the watered-down version adopted today). Anyone who is not changed by it should read it again and try harder.
Take this book down off the shelf, give it to someone to read, have them pass it on to others. No dust should touch its pages. I have no idea where my copy is but I'm sure it's being read with passion.
Forgotten Fire.......2007-05-28
This book of tradgety was very well written. It is a story of a young Armenian boy who servived the Armenian Genocide of 1915. I think that as an Armnian American it is important that we fully understand what our parents and grandparents went through and The Turkish government still will not admitt to any wrong doing.Shame on them.
Historical, well written, and powerful.......2007-04-11
The Armenian genocide is, as has been pointed out here, something that's not rarely spoken of. Turkey is in complete denial, and the world hasn't quite caught up yet. Strange, as it has been almost 100 years.
I'll admit that I knew very little about this historic event. I knew a bit, from hearing stories here and there, but I didn't really understand what it meant. "Forgotten Fire" showed it to me clearly and vividly, in a way that I don't think I'll ever forget. I don't think I CAN forget it - even three years after reading it, I could remember the clear details. I could remember moments that touched me deeply. This book isn't the sort of book you read and then toss in the "done and read" pile. It's kept.
Historically, this book does a wonderful job at showing one point of view. I hadn't ever read anything about this, so it was fascinating to read this and travel along. I loved reading it because it was powerful. I loved reading it because it was different.
What I especially liked about this book was that it all stuck with me. Maybe I was ignorant before, but after reading this well-written, vivid book, I won't forget about Armenia. The story, besides being both sad, painful, and interesting, was presented clearly and never stopped moving. It all felt real and honest. It was powerful, intense, and incredible.
I recommend this book to any young adult as a wonderful piece of literature and a vividly told piece of a little-known history. It's not for younger kids (death being a major issue), but anyone else can and should read it, if only to learn about the past.
Highly recommended.
Amazon.com
China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago.
Book Description
In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered--a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the "Oskar Schindler of China" and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as "a second rape."
Customer Reviews:
The veneer of civilization is exceedingly thin.......2007-08-21
The bestial massacre of Nanking is by any standards one of the worst evil deeds in the history of mankind. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, children and babies were brutally slaughtered in a few weeks. For those who will (or can) not read this book only one example: babies were impaled on bayonets and thrown in boiling water. Even the dead didn't receive a human treatment. Their bodies were thrown to the dogs as food.
How (was) is it possible that part of mankind sank bank into such unlimited barbarism?
The author sees different reasons:
Religion: the emperor was a god and `next to the emperor all individual life was valueless.'
Politics: Japan was an unchequed authoritarian regime dominated by the military.
Racism: the Japanese considered themselves as a master-race, with a virulent contempt for the Chinese.
Education (military) and indoctrination: teenagers were molded into killing machines.'
As one soldier put is: `In Nanking everyone became a demon within three months.'
What happened in Nanking was received jubilantly by the jingoist Japanese press. Newspapers even published the outcome of a decapitation contest. The events were also covered internationally, but it was `frightening to see how easily mankind can accept genocides.'
In sharp contrast with the unmoved international community, a courageous group of foreigners created a safety zone saving thousands of Chinese lives.
Japan has a moral obligation to present at least an official apology for what happened during the war. `Nanking was only a fraction of the totality of the atrocities committed.'
The culprits received pensions and benefits, while the victims who survived continue to suffer shame, poverty and chronic physical and mental pains.
This book is a truly exceptional illustration (also graphically) of how the thin veneer of civilization can be broken.
Highly recommended, but only for those with a strong stomach.
As disturbing as it is shocking.......2007-07-02
Iris Chang has close personal ties to the Nanking Massacre - her parents narrowly escaped the orgy of violence that ensued in 1938 - 1939. This raises questions of objectivity, which Chang clearly struggles with, hence the four stars. However, the book is well-researched and credible sources are cited - a necessary point given the accusations made.
Chang begins with a brief history of modern (since the Meji restoration) Japanese history, seeking to provide some explaination for the barbarity that happened in China during the Japanese occupation. This provides some critical background information before the catalogue of atrocities are presented in gruesome detail: gang rapes, the desecration of corpses, torture - the savagery and brutality of which appalled me. The primary sources used in researching this are irrefutable to the serious historian.
Chang then goes on to talk about the aftermath of the "Rape of Nanking" begining with the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the "Asian Nuremburg" trial) concluding with an excellent analysis of why so few were punished and what the long-term consequences of not addressing the larger issue of Japanese war crimes are, especially in light of her claim that what happened in Nanking was deliberate Japanese policy; in fact, she goes on to write that the Nanking massacre was "a metaphor for Japanese behaviour during the war." The book concludes exploring why the Holocaust in Europe is much more familar than the atrocities committed in Asia.
To some Japanese, Chang's claims are exaggerations or fabrications. (See Tanaka Maasaki's "What Really Happened in Nanking" for this perspective.) The historical record, however, clearly supports Chang's account. What struck me most deeply, however, was the similarity between the accounts of 1938 China and Yugoslavia in the 1990's, particularly the contest over whose story is told (and which history is written) and who is punished. There are lessons to be learned here larger than a single event. Recommended reading for armchair historians.
Powerful Account of a Very Tragic Wartime Catastrophe.......2007-06-25
Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" is a horrifying and gruesome account of the infamous "Rape of Nanjing" where in less than a two month span from 1937-1938, an estimated 200,000-450,000 captured Chinese civilians and unarmed, surrendering solders were massacred and/or raped in cold blood by the Japanese Military during World War II. It is also about the aftermath of the massacre in a historical sense, and the toll it has had on the victims, historians, and the world, especially Sino-Japanese relations.
Chang's writing is intense, emotional, detailed, and thought provoking. Given that her grandparents were from Nanjing and narrowly escaped their own fate from the hell of what happened there, we must read this with an understanding that Chang is inherently biased in her accounts and at times comes off as extremely emotional in her contempt of the Japanese in certain passages.
Despite her bias, she desperately tries to stay objective in her accounts, though not always successfully (the passage, even despite the cited references, on Japanese being cannibals of murdered chinese male's genitalia seemed highly questionable and speculative).
Chang makes strides in her discussion of historiology by pointing out the cancer of how history is manipulated by politics, government intervention, propaganda, radical Conservatism/Liberalism, diplomacy and political events. Because of the "Cold War", "Sino-Japanese relations", WWII itself" and "US-Japanese allegiances", the events of Nanjing have been eerily and perhaps permanently distorted at the expense of 100's of thousands of innocent victims.
The book is well organized and informative although I question her premise which nearly implies that American society and that even Japanese society is ignorant of the events that occurred in Nanjing in 1937-1938. In her premise for writing the book, she attempts to imply that there was nearly no literary English reference to the Rape of Nanjing and provided only two literary accounts in English (both written 50 years after the "Rape") of this massacre. However, she failed to site the well documented account of this Massacre in the famous military television documentary seen by millions of Americans and Europeans in the 1970s, "The World at War" where Sir Laurence Olivier made a very clear historical historical reference while footage was shown of the massacre including General Matsui's march on horse through the streets of Nanjing and footage of tied Chinese captives murdered execution style while on their knees and hands tied behind their backs:
"It was here that Nanking in December 1937 that the Japanese perpetrated what was until then, one of the worst atrocities of this century when their troops massacred more than 200,000 Chinese in cold blood.
There is also a minor question statistic she references with respect to the number of Americans killed in the Korean ar which she noted 34,000. In Washington DC, the memorial noted over 54,000 Americans dead. But, to Chang's credit, as I've learned in this book, accounting for the number of dead is never an absolute accuracy. For example, is a person dying of a disease or out of accident during war considered having been killed in a war? That's highly subjective. An American bias would count that death as a casualty of war whereby Pro Chinese or North Korean source might not accounts for that death. Both have case to include or exclude that number from the number of casualties.
The most interesting passages relate to Chang's discussion of the acts of humanity during this catastrophe, specifically of the spectacular irony of how John Rabe, an educated German who even held a stron Nazi fervor (the Nazi's were allies of Japan during the war) was responsible for saving the lives of over 300,000 Chinese by setting up a miniscule 2.5 square mile safety zone within proximity of where the Rape and Massacre happened.
My favorite passage in this entire book was on her research of what happened to John Rabe after he left Nanjing. It was beautifully written and had me reading copiously to find her resolution on what happened to thsi "Schindler of Nanjing."
Poignant also was her research on the outcomes of other European and Americans who were in Nanjing during the siege and how politics ostracized these heros whose humanitarian efforts went unnoticed.
In her introduction, Iris Chang mused that her "greatest hope is that this book will inspire other authors and historians to investigate the stories of Nanjing" and that it will "stir the conscience of Japan to accept responsibility for this incident.
This book should really inspire the world to skeptically evaluate their own histories with a fine tooth comb given the Japanese Government's attempt to undermine what happened in Nanking.
On a side note, this book also inspires me to read more of the Jewish communities who fled Nazi Persecution Europe to live in Shangahi, which had been coincidentally the starting point of Japanese occupation prior to the capture of Nanjing. This book also inspires me to research the horror of the Bataan Death March and of the mass burials that occurred in Hong Kong, other areas of China, the Phillipines and other areas that had been seized by the Imperialist Japanese forces during WWII.
Disturbing, enlightening, and thoughtful.......2007-06-07
The Rape of Nanking is an amazingly easy read considering the dark subject that it addresses. Chang did an outstanding job of compiling absolutely airtight, irrefutable information about the atrocities committed by the Japanese military in 1937, but this book is far more than simply an endless recitation of that evidence. When I first picked up this book I feared that it would simply be 200+ pages of stories about atrocities. But as Chang herself noted early in the book, doing so would simply be monotonous and would eventually numb the reader. Instead, she discusses several different and important aspects about the Rape of Nanking, beginning with an historical overview of the roots of imperial Japan and the culture that allowed an entire generation of young men to become cruel, inhumane butchers. She goes on to inform the reader about the conflict between Japan and China, and eventually of course relates specific facts about the savagery committed against so many hundreds of thousands of Chinese in Nanking. But the book does not stop there. Chang goes to great lengths to describe the heroic efforts of a handful of westerners who were able to save hundreds of thousands of Chinese from certain torture and death. She concludes by discussing the aftermath of the Rape of Nanking and how it remains an incredibly sensitive topic for so many people. This is an absolutely outstanding work of nonfiction that everyone should read. The reviewers here who have disparaged Chang and her effort to ensure that the world never forgets about the evil that occurred in Nanking should be ashamed of themselves. People like that only illustrate how important it is to keep the memory of Nanking alive and never surrender to those who would bury the truth because they are too cowardly to face it.
Important, necessary, courageous and seminal book........2007-05-27
Chang's account has inspired a 2007 expensive and carefully-marketed documentary film of the same title, and that is the book's chief value--as an awareness-raising event that exposes our frequently "selective" focus on incidents of man's inhumanity to man (Rwanda being one such incident of selective amnesia). The book is an essential artifact, and Chang should be applauded for her conscientiousness, diligence, and courage in producing what has already proven to be a seminal work, producing ground-shaking tremors throughout the international community.
For many, if not most, readers, the Introduction and Epilogue will most likely prove sufficient to convey the author's intended purpose and effect. Those who take pleasure in marking the historical circumstances of war and its aftermath, along with reading graphic descriptions of sensational, specific incidents of torture, etc.), will no doubt wish to read the entire account. For others the aforementioned two sections, an account such as the one on Wikipedia, and the two-part video on Youtube, "The Rape of Nanking" (ignore the transparently weak rebuttals), should be sufficient.
Some readers will appreciate Chang's simplification of the atrocity and the reasons for it. She issues a disclaimer in the Introduction that "Japan bashing" is the farthest thing from her mind, but the ensuing account is one that paints the Japanese--from the ancient Samurai/Bushido code to the 20th-century expansionist mentality to the deification of the emperor to the robotic school system to the cruel and inhuman training of its own military youth to the enforced slavery of "comfort women" to Japan's continual and continuing denial of the past--in broad, culturally incriminating, stereotyping strokes. A reader, therefore, needs to exercise some counterbalancing skepticism--for example, toward the account of the Samurai, who represented an ideal, much like the knights of Camelot or the radical individualists of the American frontier, from which modern Japan deviated rather than suffered. Also, it has been shown that the "comfort women" were also supplied, following World War II, to thousands of American troops, and with the cooperation of the American post-War military command.
In answering the all-important question of "why," Chang is quite convincing with her limited, though largely undeveloped, list of reasons--ranging from "transference of oppression" (what we might refer to as the "wife-battering syndrome") to the herd mentality of losers suddenly cast in the role of conquerors to an entire culture's utter conviction of following a divine imperative in the best interests of China as well as Japan. Chang hits hardest on the genocide that occurs because nations who should know better (the U.S., for example) are content to remain disengaged from whatever doesn't affect them directly. But her most compelling reason, to my mind, is cultural-racial pride, a theme that during the American Civil War produced suffering and death exceeding by far anything that occurred at Nanking.
Chang even suggests that because the Japanese and Chinese were so similar in skin color and physical appearance, the racial antagonism was intensified. Not possessing the verifiable demarcation of lighter or darker skin color, the Japanese were all the more zealous to proclaim their superiority. So again and again we're brought back to the deadliest sin of all--from Greek tragedy to Biblical writings to Faulkner's accounts of the tragic fall of the Old South: hubris, arrogance, or just plain pride, which unfortunately is exclusive to no individual human being or nation.
By now, you'd think we'd begin to get the message. And it's not about the Japanese.
Amazon.com
The surprise winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize, DBC Pierre's debut novel, Vernon God Little, makes few apologies in its darkly comedic portrait of Martirio, Texas, a town reeling in the aftermath of a horrific school shooting. Fifteen-year-old Vernon Little narrates the first-person story with a cynical twang and a four-letter barb for each of his diet-obsessed townsfolk. His mother, endlessly awaiting the delivery of a new refrigerator, seems to exist only to twist an emotional knife in his back; her friend, Palmyra, structures her life around the next meal at the Bar-B-Chew Barn; officer Vaine Gurie has Vernon convicted of the crime before she's begun the investigation; reporter Eulalio Ledesma hovers between a comforting father-figure and a sadistic Bond villain; and Jesus, his best friend in the world, is dead--a victim of the killings. As his life explodes before him, Vernon flees his home in pursuit of a tropical fantasy: a cabin on a beach in Mexico he once saw in the movie Against All Odds. But the police--and TV crews--are in hot pursuit.
Vernon God Little is a daring novel and demands a patient reader, not because it is challenging to read--Pierre's prose flows effortlessly, only occasionally slipping from the unmistakable voice of his hero--but because the book skates so precariously between the almost taboo subject of school violence and the literary gamesmanship of postmodern fiction. Yet, as the novel unfolds, Pierre's parodic version of American culture never crosses the line into caricature, even when it climaxes in a death-row reality TV show. And Vernon, whose cynicism and smart-ass "learnings" give way to a poignant curiosity about the meaning of life, becomes a fully human, profoundly sympathetic character. --Patrick O'Kelley
Book Description
When sixteen kids are shot on high school grounds, everyone looks for someone to blame. Meet Vernon Little, under arrest at the sheriff's office, a teenager wearing nothing but yesterday's underwear and his prized logo sneakers. Moments after the shooter, his best buddy, turns the gun on himself, Vernon is pinned as an accomplice. Out for revenge are the townspeople, the cable news networks, and Deputy Vaine Gurie, a woman whose zeal for the Pritikin diet is eclipsed only by her appetite for barbecued ribs from the Bar-B-Chew Barn. So Vernon does what any red-blooded American teenager would do; he takes off for Mexico.
Vernon God Little is a provocatively satirical, riotously funny look at violence, materialism, and the American media.
Customer Reviews:
Catcher in the Rye on Crack.......2007-05-29
I hate to be another reviewer comparing Vernon God Little to Catcher in the Rye, but sometimes comparisons are inevitable, especially when a book clearly takes influence from another. Obviously Catcher is the superior book, but thta would be obvious if you were comparing Catcher in the Rye to most books. Anyway, all comparisons aside...
Vernon God Little is the story of Vernon Little who lives in a heightened version of our own reality, in a small Texas town called Martirio. Like many people Vernon hates everything about his small town, including his house, his mother, and himself. Like Holden Caulfield before him, Vernon Little spends most of this narrative novel telling us his "learnings" on various topics while making a harebrained journey to escape his life. In Vernon's case, though, he's got more reason to escape: the cops are after him.
The first quarter of this book is a little tough to get through. DBC Pierre's writing style asks a lot of the reader. Readers must learn to accept an entirely new way of plot and character development, where little plot is given and a character we don't yet know starts right in on everything he thinks about the world around him. Only about a quarter of the way in do we find out that a school shooting has happened at Vernon's school, and that his best friend Jesus was responsible. But that leaves no one alive to defend Vernon's honor and now the police see him as the number one suspect.
With a sleazy TV repairman turned news reporter on his trail, his mother always waiting for his new refrigerator, and a girl from his high school out to seduce him, Vernon has to figure out an escape plan and high tail it to Mexico.
Vernon God Little is a hilarious, highly farcical romp through many taboo subjects. DBC Pierre doesn't stop to apologize as Vernon discusses his thoughts and experiences on every subject from pedophilia to murder to bowel movements. With an out of this world cast of characters and a brilliant sarcastic narrator, the reader can't go wrong.
The first 75 pages took me a few days to get into, but the last 200 I read all in one sitting. It's that good. If you get a chance to check the book out, go for it. Like I said, it's The Catcher in the Rye on crack.
I don't get it.......2007-05-28
Remember the scene in "Big," where Tom Hanks' character comes up with a brilliant idea for a new toy and his boss couldn't be prouder? And he has this annoying colleague who keeps saying, "I don't get it?"
Learning that this book has won a major literary prize and gotten showered with accolades, makes me feel like that annoying guy. It's a coming-of-age novel that has been compared to "Catcher in the Rye", as these kinds of books invariably do. Yes, if Salinger had been bedridden for years and force fed a steady diet of American TV. It's that bad.
Vernon God Little is a teenager who has gotten mixed up in a school shooting by his best friend, now dead. He lives in one of those strenuously wacky Southern towns that only occur in literature such as this and Hollywood movies. Everyone is overweight, talks in slang, has a colorful name, and is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Ha ha. Aren't Americans trashy? This is not exactly new news, and cariactures may be amusing but don't make a lasting impression on the reader, at least not this one.
Little's clumsy attempts to clear his name all backfire and he winds up on death row. There, he suddenly gets fed a heavy dose of life lessons. Does he die? If you make it to the end, you'll find out, but by then you might be exasperated with the book.
Authors like Jodi Picoult, who recently came out with a school shooting novel, clearly have done their homework and interviewed people who were actually involved. Although their books are fiction, they are based on real events and sound authentic.
Also there were no real sympathetic characters, unless you counted the dimbulb blond girl who liked sex. The deceased school shooter sounded as if he might have been an interesting character to flesh out more, but he remained as sketchy as the rest. The genius of "Catcher," as dated as the slang is now is the lasting impact of Holden's desire for human connection. He loved his mom, as clueless as she was, whereas Vernon regards everything his poor one does as a "knife in his back." While this may be accurate, it wound up making me more sympathetic toward his mom, not him.
unfunny, annoyingly written.......2007-03-13
I read this novel as part of my (perhaps crazy) self-imposed plan to read all the novels that have won or been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. So far, I must say that VERNON GOD LITTLE is my least favorite. The characters are cartoonish and unreal, but that's okay--many likeable novels have been told that way. The plot is contrived and unbelieveable, culminating with an absolutely preposterous, deux-a-machina ending, unredeemed, in my view, by any real charm or humor. But I suppose the facet of the book I found the most annoying was the text itself, clunky, awkward prose trying too hard to be cute. The narrator expresses himself in a way no other human ever has, and certainly no fifteen year-old American, from Texas or anywhere else. Except maybe Pluto. I think it's unwise for a writer to attempt to characterize the inhabitants of a culture foreign to his own in such a way. A brave artisic attempt? Possibly, but a failure, to me, at least. I can only assume the Booker Prize was awarded to this book more for political reasons than artistic ones--the other nominees I've read have not let me down in this way. And yes, I understand that VERNON GOD LITTLE is meant to be a satire of America's media-driven shallow consumeristic ways, but it doesn't take much talent to hit an easy target. VERNON GOD LITTLE is about as subtle as a train wreck, and every bit as funny.
Vernon Genius Little.......2007-02-18
By the time you've watched TV people be devestated because a prince decided they're not chosen to fly to Europe with him for a date, or watched them be devestated because they'll be thrown out of the Big Brother house, it's hard to feel something other than tired when the newsbreak shows people reacting to something legitimately horrible. When you watch TV humans appear to rehearse all their lives for something really bad to happen to them. Understandable, then, is Vernon's supposedly incriminating "impassiveness" after he's witnessed his best friend do a school shooting then kill himself, leaving Vernon as the "skate goat". Unlike some reviewers, I found Vernon's mix of wise and puerile and ignorant believable for a guy his age who implies a couple of times that he's "a quiet one, a wordsmith", but towards the end I felt like if he died he should've willed his memoir to his mum so she could get it published and live off the winnings from some sort of literary prize. Vernon may sound his age, but he's not an average fifteen-year-old. There's some really wonderful wordplay in this book, and only occasionally despite Vernon's poetic Vern-acular did I find myself rereading something to figure out what the hell he was on about. One star fell from my rating because on some of the rereads I found out there was no denying that I'd tripped over a strained metaphor. That, and towards the end I felt like the message was that to survive in this world you have to be a con man--"you're supposed to be a psycho". Given Pierre's background this felt a little propaganda-ish.
(3.5) Definitely Worth a Look.......2006-11-06
I'd been meaning to read this book for awhile now, since my faith in the Booker Prize as a solid award has yet to be proven wrong, but every time I picked up a copy and read the first page I inevitably put the book back down wondering whether or not the overuse of simile and descriptive language would eventually overwhelm me, thus making the book impossible to read at a quick clip. It's one thing to use language in a powerful way, it's another to flourish poetic skill every other sentence. That being said, Pierre's Vernon Little is a wonderful voice, one that makes this otherwise flawed text, remarkable.
The best way to describe the book is to think about it as the kind of thing an angst-ridden teen would write if he or she had the maturity and artistic skill with language to see it to the end. Once I got past the first page and realized the tone would carry all the way through and more importantly, that the description was an authenitc part of the character, I began to really enjoy what was going on on the page. The social commentary (and even criticism) embedded in Little's struggle to prove his innocence in a high school shooting case that resembles what took place at Columbine. Pierre's inclusion of the way the media can warp certain things and how quickly a public hungry for drama will lap it up is a pertinent point, one that resonates throughout the novel.
Unfortunately, as strong as the voice is, it couldn't save a novel that lacked a coherent (or more importantly, one that could force a reader to suspend any feelings of disbelief) and an ending that did not do the work justice. As satirical and farcical as the novel is, the meandering plot takes away from the effectiveness of Little's voice. Some of the actions of the characters make no sense, especially those of Little's love interest. The ending, which provides one of those long tension building climaxes, fizzles when Pierre decides that everything has to work out in the end for our protagonist. He should have gone ahead and had him die.
Other than that, this is an exciting book because it stands as a solid debut from an author I look forward to reading more in the future.
Book Description
After decades of bloody revolutions and political terror, many scholars and politicians lament the rise and brief influence of the left in Latin America; since the triumph of Castro they have accused the left there of rejecting democracy, embracing Communist totalitarianism, and prompting both revolutionary violence and a right-wing backlash. The Last Colonial Massacre challenges these views.
Using Guatemala as a case study, Greg Grandin argues that the Cold War in Latin America was a struggle not between American liberalism and Soviet Communism but between two visions of democracy. The main effect of United States intervention in Latin America, Grandin shows, was not the containment of Communism but the elimination of home-grown concepts of social democracy.
Through unprecedented archival research and gripping personal testimonies, Grandin uncovers the hidden history of the Latin American Cold War: of hidebound reactionaries intent on holding on to their own power and privilege; of Mayan Marxists, blending indigenous notions of justice with universal ideas of freedom and equality; and of a United States supporting new styles of state terror throughout the continent. Drawing from declassified U.S. documents, Grandin exposes Washington's involvement in the 1966 secret execution of more than thirty Guatemalan leftists, which, he argues, prefigured the later wave of disappearances in Chile and Argentina.
Impassioned but judicious, The Last Colonial Massacre is history of the highest order—a work that will dramatically recast our understanding of Latin American politics and the triumphal role of the United States in the Cold War and beyond.
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