A sharply observed document of totalitarianism and its discontents—this gifted artist in particular.
A renowned graphic artist and painter writes of his early life in Cuba and later life in U.S. exile, finding parallels in both countries, “where men with guns made the decisions.”
Born in 1971, Rodriguez came of age in the Cuban countryside, where, owing to an entrepreneurially minded father, the family sometimes had a little more food than their neighbors. Both parents knew how to navigate the system: “Mamá would never mention Fidel Castro’s name. When referring to him, she would quietly rub her cheek to indicate Castro’s beard, so that no passing neighbors would hear her speaking of El Comandante.” It was their children’s being spirited off to school to be indoctrinated, among other things, that convinced the parents to abandon their homeland and join the Marielito boatlift of 1980. They arrived in the U.S. and rebuilt their lives, with Rodriguez working odd jobs until moving to New York to attend art school. Rodriguez emerged there as a critic of Donald Trump’s presidency so well known as to draw down denunciation from the man himself. To that, the author has a simple reply: “To an immigrant like me, America is a dream, a land of freedom and opportunity where one can work and express oneself without fear of violence or political persecution. For me, January 6, 2021, shattered the dream.” A few scenes, such as those depicting time spent in a holding camp before boarding their boat to freedom, might have been condensed in the interest of heightening the drama. Nonetheless, the well-rendered graphic story is plenty dramatic on its own, and it’s significant not just for its portrayal of Castro’s Cuba but also for offering evidence that the Cuban American exile community is not politically monolithic.
A sharply observed document of totalitarianism and its discontents—this gifted artist in particular.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781250753977
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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