Historically significant firsthand documentation from the 20th century’s darkest period.
Two survivors of the Holocaust offer a dual-voiced account of their concentration camp experiences and their lives afterward.
The Bucci sisters spent their early lives in Fiume, an Italian city taken over by Croatia at the end of World War II. In this shared memoir, the authors bear witness to the nine months (April 1944 to January 1945) they spent at Auschwitz. They were 6 and 4 when they were first separated from their family. Their fate was unusual, since most children were killed on arrival. But as translator Goldstein speculates in her note, because they looked almost identical, they may have appealed to Josef Mengele, who experimented on twins. The Buccis attribute their survival in the camp to the unexpected kindness of an otherwise cruel female prison guard who gave them extra food and unexpected gifts. “We don’t know the reason,” write the authors, “but it’s precisely her care for us that later saved our lives.” After liberation, the two were sent for one year to Prague and then to a group home for child Holocaust survivors run by a woman who trained under child psychologist Anna Freud. The woman later found the girls’ parents, both of whom had survived imprisonment but in postwar years had been forced to move to Trieste to retain Italian citizenship. Their mother pushed them to “grow up as Catholics” to protect them from harm, but the girls held fast to Judaism. That decision formed the bedrock of the commitment they developed as older women to forgo forgetfulness of the past and tell their story. Written in the simple, direct language of witness and accompanied throughout by family photographs, this poignant story celebrates human resilience and warns readers living in an increasingly divided and chaotic world to beware the “monsters” created by “the sleep of reason.”
Historically significant firsthand documentation from the 20th century’s darkest period.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66260-071-5
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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