5 comments about The Soccer War.

1. This is very worthwhile reading for residents of North America or Europe to gain a better understanding of conflict and politics in other parts of the world, even if it dates back to the 1960s and 70s. Kapuscinski describes events and situations that most of us will never experience, fortunately. His style is direct, immediate, sometimes blunt, but especially effective in conveying what war is like on the ground. He was an "official" journalist for a Communist country. He had the privilege of traveling abroad, but everything he wrote for publication was censored. Presumably Kapuscinski's masters wanted him to paint a picture of brave Third World peoples fighting for freedom against capitalist exploitation. But there is little or nothing here that you could call Communist propaganda. Instead it is engaging reporting of historic events in conflict zones (Africa, Central America, Syria, Cyprus) by an intelligent, humane observer who has good insights.



2. It is a striking book. Mr. Kapuscinski is a great writer and the narrative is simply wonderful.
   
   It is a great account of the cold war, as fought in Africa and Latin America.



3. Kapuscinski is the master of international journalism. Often he prefaces his accounts by saying something to the affect of, "Everyone told me that trying to get into the Congo was suicide. I had to do it." The result is a perspective that no one else is able to give, a sometimes brutal but eye-opening account of the effects of war.
   The best part of The Soccer War to me is Kapuscinski's ability not only to report on war, but to capture the humanity of the people involved. He is in this way an anthropologist as much a journalist. True, this book covers extensive topic matter: Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Algeria, Congo, Burundi, Cyprus, etc, but Kapuscinki's voice is powerful enough to unify these seemingly disparate stories.
   If you are curious about world history, if you want a humanistic and first-hand view of events that have shaped our world today, this is your book. There were times when I was literally on the edge of my seat wondering if Kapuscinski would make it out alive. Of course, we know he did because he pubished a book about these experiences.
   
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4. It's almost impossible to process the news with the same perspective after reading this book...what was true in the 60s still rings true today. I picked up this book while simultaneously reading articles in Esquire and The New Yorker about people (Bill Gates, Bill Clinton...) trying to make a difference in Africa. While I was made hopeful by the observations in today's mainstream press, I grew increasingly frustrated when confronted with the dark reality that Kapuscinski exposes.



5. As somebody who once lived in Honduras before the infamous soccer war of 1969, I long had Kapuscinski's book on my "must read" list. Though I bought it five years ago, I didn't get around to reading it till just now. I'm glad I did. THE SOCCER WAR is another sterling volume from this master of description.
   
   THE SOCCER WAR isn't a book about the absurd war between El Salvador and Honduras, triggered by World Cup qualification matches, but really caused by El Salvador's overpopulation and the subsequent overflow of Salvadorenos into much-emptier Honduras. The war may also be ascribed to the fact that neither country has been able to tame its landowning classes, who continue to this day to run rampant over the poor masses of people. In any case, this war, which happened decades ago, occupies only 30 pages of a 234 page book. The rest of the book contains vignettes from Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, Burundi, Algeria, Tanganyika, Syria, Cyprus, and Ethiopia. I think another title would have given readers a better idea of what the book is about. Anyway, I would not say this book is about particular societies or countries, rather it is about the human condition. Kapuscinski, if you have read any of his other (excellent) work, specializes in inserting himself into extreme situations----war, rebellion, conflict, and abnormal behavior. Where the strictures of daily life have fallen down, we find him reporting, usually at considerable risk to his person. He is nearly burned to death in Nigeria, nearly executed in Burundi, nearly lynched in the Congo, nearly blown up in Honduras. In every case, he manages to portray some participants as humane and decent, or as simple people caught up in events beyond their control. He never writes off groups of people as `wild' or `barbarous', but manages to `read' them even as he faces almost certain death. The absurdity of all this violence, the violence that never ends on this planet, comes through loud and clear. Ryszard, you wrote your best, but nobody in charge listened. Readers of the book, however, will come away with a better understanding of human nature and its universal similarity on every continent, among every race and religion. From the stupidity, waste, and blood, we can learn. We just don't.

2 comments about Dreams Die Hard.

1. This book gives a great insight into the excitement of the late 60's, and their less pleasant aftermath. It's written by David Harris, the famous SDS leader from Stamford who was one of the few to actually go to prison for draft resistance-- in the midst of which he married Joan Baez. Two other people are described in fascinating detail: Allard Lowenstein, an anti-war Congressman elected in the late 60's, and speaker at my Harvard commencement in 1969; and Dennis Sweeney, activist and Lowenstein protege-- who later murdered Lowenstein.
   
   This is a terrifically writen, hard to put down, account of the hopes and disappointments of the sixties.



2. In 1980 Allard Lowenstein was assassinated by a former "protege" named Dennis Sweeney. The two men first met in the early 60s when Sweeney was a 19yr old undergrad at Stanford. Lowenstein was a prof of Govt at Stanford and "Dean of Men". Sweeney was judged to be incompetent to stand trial by virtue of his schizophrenia. His whereabouts today is not clear but Lowenstein was buried in Arlington National Cemetery a few yard from JFK.
   
   The early 60s was a time of great change and ideological fervor and the interactions of Lowenstein and Sweeney are chronicled for us here by David Victor Harris. Lowenstein was what we today would describe as a motivator and a charismatic speaker who helped wake up the youth of the New Frontier and inspired them to go out and make our world a better place. Harris was one such youth who fell under Lowenstein's spell as a "protege" and is perhaps best known today for later marrying folksinger and human rights advocate Joan Baez. [Baez stands alone as one of the few anti Viet Nam War protestors who spoke out against the brutal postwar human rights record of the conquering North Vietnamese in the South] Of course to David Harris him for that achievemt alone would be a disservice. He like so many young idealistic and presumbaly well-off young collegians (from Stanford but also from Yale and other Ivies back east) saw first hand the segregation and hatred of pre Civil Rights Act Mississippi. Their experiences of southern racism and the establishment liberal Democrats who sought to compromise and negotiate with racist Dixiecrats of that time radicalized these students and paved the way for the antiwar counterculture.
   
   What I found most interesting about this book was the psychodynamics of the relationships Lowenstein formed with his many largely un-named "proteges". The young men like Sweeney presumably gravitated to the fatherlike figure of Lowenstein for understandable reasons. Lowenstein was in his 30s and his appeals to these young men met profound psyche needs: ie he sought out young men with "leadership potential" and then counted on them to provide him with transportation/chaueffeur services whenever he hit town on one of his many lectures to likeminded cause groupies.
   In the case of Sweeney we see a young man who never really knew his own father. Lowenstein ably stepped up to fill that role. And protege Sweeney was as dedicated and idealistic as any young impressionable altar boy could ever be in the presence of Lowenstein, a veritable high priest of mid60s Liberalism.
   Here we learn that my priest/altar boy comparison is apt indeed!!
   Allard would ask a student if he could drive Allard to a student gathering/teach-in at any of the various campii of that era which were aflame with aroused ideological passions. Allard certainly knew how to work up a crowd and the young men were eager to do whatever they could to help spread the word of their priest/father figure.
   Invariably the acolyte and Lowenstein would drive late into the night to reach their destination and eventually Lowenstein would suggest to his tired young chauffeur/protege that they stop for the night. Lowenstein would instruct the young man to wait in the car while he went in to get a room. Surprise surprise surprise!! They have only one room left and only one bed.
   So the naive and unsuspecting youth would strip down to underwear and tee shirt and lie down on his half of the bed. Lowenstein would have the other half.
   
   You can figure out what happened next. Lowenstein would invariably hug and get close up to the young man. Remember this was 1965 (or in Sweeney's case 1964!) Homosexual conduct was not as favorably or benignly viewed then among intellectuals as it is today. We cant know how many such "proteges" of the great Lowenstein endured such a maneuver since Harris seldom names them outright. Harris himself experienced a similar setup and learned that he and Sweeney werent the only young men Allard was able to manipulate into this arrangement.
   
   Lowenstein's sexuality was never clearly revealed. He expressed great solidarity with Florida homosexuals battling against Anita Bryant but never actually came out himself even though as Harris narrates many young campus activists spoke of trysts with Lowenstein.
   After Lowenstein's death Harris wrote about the "great work" Lowenstein and Sweeney had done with their voter registration drive in Mississippi. Lowenstein's fans and friends chafed at the evidence suggesting he was a sexual predator. He eventually married a gal and fathered 3 kids. One son today is a lawyer activist like his dad and worked on the disastrous John Kerry Presidential campaign.

1 comments about The Invisible Palace: The True Story of a Journalist's Murder in Java.

1. This book gives a great flavour of Java, by someone who has clearly spent a lot of time there. It's a true story, but reads like a novel: larger-than-life characters, bizarre plot twists, an exotic location, and a murder mystery. Set in Indonesia during 1996-1997, the country is just experiencing the first rumblings of political discontent. A journalist, Udin, is killed after writing stories critical of a local politician. The subsequent investigation turns into a ham-fisted cover-up, complete with a dim-witted fall guy threatened into confessing a ficticious crime of passion, but Udin's colleagues and a band of ambitious lawyers expose the plot.
   
   The author carefully sets the scene, explaining the background to the action as he goes along. The journalistic digressions - on Javanese belief in magic, on Suharto's family dealings, on the static and corrupt nature of Indonesian "electoral" politics - are among the most interesting elements here. The bits on Indonesian police procedures, and the warped legal system are also great.
   
   The book is most successful in explaining how an authoritarian regime like Indonesia's actually works in practice - how the benefits of power are shared out, who loses out, and how ordinary people are forced to compromise. In the Udin case, in the end, a lot of people refused to compromise. A year later - after the 1998 riots - Suharto was gone.
   
   A remarkable story, and a cracking read.

1 comments about Theodore H. White and Journalism As Illusion.

1. "Theodore H. White and Journalism as Illusion" is a fascinating in-depth study of the life and times of Theodore H. White. Using the vast resources of the T. H. White archives at Harvard University, Joyce Hoffmann sets up White as the prime example of what she feels was wrong with journalism in the early Cold War era. She alternately uses the phrases "journalism of illusion" and "insider journalism" to describe White's writings. "Journalism of illusion" refers to the writings of those who, like White, were American patriots first and journalists second.

   The best examples Hoffmann has of White as a "journalist of illusion" come from the early part of White's career when he was in China, writing about Chiang Kai-shek for Time magazine. White would routinely downplay his observations of Chiang's corruption and brutality, believing it was more important to portray Chiang as a hero, lest America's support for China should wane and China would fall to the Japanese or the communists. It was only after repeated exposure to the Chiang regime's brutality that White's illusions about Chiang began to change. By that time, however, the heroic image he and other journalists had created had already taken hold in America, and White found himself under extreme pressure to follow the line. Editors at Time censored his work, feeling that the change in White's opinion was due to his encounters with the Chinese communists. "Journalism of illusion" meant being an American patriot first, and telling the truth second. It also meant following the teachings of Time's Henry Luce, who believed in "enlightened journalism", and told White to report events not as they were, but as they should be. Hoffmann's critique of White as an "insider journalist" comes from various periods of White's life, but the best examples are from his time in France, and from the Kennedy years. White was a journalist who loved associating with those in power, which Hoffmann associates to White's upbringing in Boston's poor Jewish ghetto. Never surrounded by prosperity as a child, White seemed to gravitate toward the prosperous as an adult. Hoffmann believes that White's admiration for the rich and powerful, and his desire to be one, seriously colored his writings. White repeated engaged in journalistic practices that would be considered inappropriate by today's standards of integrity. In France, for example, White was commissioned to write a profile of diplomat David Bruce. When White was finished, he showed a copy of the write-up to Bruce, presumably for fact-checking purposes, but also to make sure that nothing White wrote would be considered insulting to Bruce or his wife. White would follow the same practice in his write-ups of the Kennedy administration. Most famously, he showed Bobby Kennedy copies of "Making of the President -- 1960" before its publication in order to get Kennedy's feedback. As an insider journalist, White loved having the ear of those in power, and being part of the decision-making process. He was careful that none of his writings insulted those he admired.

   Hoffmann's book is a valuable resource for what it unveils about White's life. The examples of correspondence with administration figures, such as Robert F. Kennedy, illustrate how deeply White was allowed into the corridors of power. Several flaws, however, mar this book. One, for example, is that the reader is never quite sure why White was chosen to be the exemplar of "journalism of illusion" and "insider journalism." Hoffmann provides examples of many journalists of the time who engaged in myth making about the Kennedys. Walter Lippmann, for example, comes across as a virtual spokesman for the administration. Hoffmann also describes journalists who knew about the U-2 flights, or the activity in Vietnam, and decided to help the government cover-up these stories because of patriotism. Any number of them could have been chosen as examples of "journalism of illusion" or "insider journalism." Also, in China, why White was chosen to represent journalists making myths for Chiang is never elaborated. This is questionable, because White eventually repudiated Chiang while other journalists were still writing favorable pieces.

   I must echo the reviewer in the journal "Reviews in American History" who was troubled by Hoffmann's seeming lack of definitions for journalistic "truth" and "integrity." Hoffmann was obviously troubled by the style of journalism exemplified by White, but she never gives her own impressions of what journalism is or should be. If her contention is that modern journalism has finally latched on to the absolute truth, then I must disagree with the entire premise of this book. Certainly "insider journalists" and "journalists of illusion" exist today as they did back then. That is probably not her contention. We, however, are left to speculate on Hoffmann's views of the "truth" and modern journalism, because they are simply not there. This is highly unfortunate.

   Hoffmann's faults, however large, cannot totally discredit this book. It is an interesting look at one of America's most influential journalists. Her use of the White archives is exemplary. Her devotion to journalistic fact and fiction, or rather "truth" and "illusion," is unfortunately dubious. Camelot cannot be read as totally "truth" or "illusion." It had elements of both. Theodore H. White, consequently, may be forgiven of some of the charges Hoffmann levels against him. His work, while not completely true, is not the total mythical illusion that Hoffmann believes it to be.

No comments about Carlos Lacerda, Brazilian Crusader: Volume II: The Years 1960-1977 (Dulles, John Wf//Carlos Lacerda, Brazilian Crusader).

1 comments about Events Leading Up to My Death: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter.

1. This warm and insightful 1997 memoir by Howard K Smith (1914-2002) is worth reading. Smith describes his Louisiana upbringing, his Depression-era studies at Tulane and as a Rhodes Scholar, and his 60-years in journalism. Smith also describes covering Nazi Germany for Ed Murrow and CBS Radio during the war (1940-1941). Leaving Germany just before Pearl Harbor, Smith kept broadcasting from neutral Switzerland, writing LAST TRAIN FROM BERLIN about his experiences. After the war, the author helped usher in television news, moderated the first Kennedy-Nixon Presidential debate, covered civil rights protests, etc. Smith also describes leaving CBS in a dispute, and moving to ABC, where his fatherly voice and reasoned commentaries made him a fixture. Readers also learn his views on LBJ, Vietnam, Nixon, etc. Some criticized Smith for tilting rightward from his early liberalism (he was pro-Vietnam), but he was usually a voice of calm and reason.
   
   This book never took off in sales, but it is as warm and informative as the author. Readers might also enjoy memoirs from other CBS journalists like William L. Shirer, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, etc.

No comments about Man from Babel (Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Mo).

No comments about The Autobiography of S.S. McClure.

1 comments about The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald Thirty-Five Years Later.

1. I really enjoyed how this book showed the other side to F. Scott Fitzgerald. I thought the view was a bit biased because of the fact that Sheilah Graham had been so close to Fitzgerald. Some of the stories may have been tainted because the perspective came from her. But overall, it was an interesting book that I enjoyed.

5 comments about Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent.

1. the author,ruth gruber,tells a fascinating story.she is an amazing woman,very bright and gutsy.one feels as if he or she is going along with ms. gruber on her journeys. she is an accomplished writer and journalist. i recommend this book for others who want to go with her on her journeys.



2. This very engaging book covers so many experiences that you have to keep reminding yourself it's only about Ruth Gruber's first 25 years. While others have commented negatively on her simple writing style, I found it refreshing. She doesn't come across as a Ph.D. disseminating her vast knowledge, but as the young woman she was at the time, amazed at being able to have all the experiences she had. She seems to write from that viewpoint, so that even though she wrote this book much later in life, you feel like you're having a chat with "Rut," as the Russians call her, who is a very intelligent, but still very young woman. She apparently based this book on notes she took at the time, so its youthful attitude is authentic. Be warned, though, if you're older than 25 you're going to come away from this book feeling like a complete slacker.



3. I bought this because I was interested in early women's lib-ers who "just did it" and in her 1930s era access to Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. She certainly is an interesting woman with a will power, but her access and her insights into these two countries were minimal and superficial. While she ackowledges that she was a pawn, the information she does present adds nothing to the understanding of those two countries or to what it must have been like to BE there. The Artic adventures are more promising, but like the rest of the book suffer from a really quite juvenile writing style that does little to effectively or movingly capture the moments she experiences. Finally, her lack of introspection seem to suggest that she really did "just do it" without much of a real reason and without much struggle and that just isn't very interesting reading.



4. I was inspired to purchase this book along with Haven after watching the mini-series on TV. Ruth Gruber is a woman definitely ahead of her time. She puts modern day "women's libbers" to shame. This is a woman who, when she decided to do something, didn't live her amazing life so she could show the world what a woman could do. She lived her amazing life because she took advantage of any and all opportunities offered her. She didn't say, "Let me do it so I can show the world a woman can do it." She just said, "Let me do it because I can." She should be an example to all -- men and women alike. I would recommend this book and Haven to anyone interested in learning more about the history of the period as well as to anyone simply interested in a good read. Ms. Gruber writes her books in a way that brings them alive. They are not historical textbooks, nor are they "me" books. They are simply wonderfully inspiring books about a wonderfully inspiring woman.



5. Many of you who see the CBS miniseries will be reading and loving HAVEN,the book, but may be puzzled that the material on Ruth's experiences in 1930s Germany are --missing. Look no further! The information is here. If you are hooked on HAVEN you will want to read this book also, because the flashbacks to Germany are entirely taken from AHEAD OF TIME. It's also a great book. As Joan Michel wrote in HADASSAH MAGAZINE upon first publication in 1991:

   -"Talk about courageous pioneers and voyages into uncharted waters, about plumbing the depths of the human spirit, of discovering new worlds and uncovering hidden teasures..Ruth Gruber takes us on an extraordinary personal journey."

   Ruth Gruber, my stepmother, is 89 and I can vouch that she remains one of the most brilliant and adventurous women you could ever hope to meet, as well as THE BEST storyteller. She learned story telling from a consumate artist, Virginia Woolf, on whom Ruth wrote the very first doctoral thesis, conferred by the Univerity of Cologne in 1931 when she was but twenty. The University boasted that Ruth was "the world's youngest PhD" and in honor of her achievement, Cologne's Lord Mayer Konrad Adenauer presented her with a gift of two magnificent art books. As she left his chambers, the future United Nations leader placed his hand on her head, as in a benediciton."Bless you my child. May God go with you."

   And- it seems as though God did!