A well-written, convincing case for why Ukraine matters to the world’s future.
In this nonfiction book, a foreign relations expert surveys the global impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine and offers context.
Dedicated to “all Ukrainians” who “shall triumph over this war too,” this volume analyzes the Eastern European nation’s historic relationship with Russia and how the world came to its “most challenging moment” since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Chowdhury’s erudite account walks readers through the turbulent history of Ukraine during World War II and the Cold War, its post-Soviet independence, and the forces inside Russia that initiated the current conflict. While this story is not unknown, it is related here in an accessible yet nuanced writing style. And the book often adds underreported elements to its contextualization of the war. While not justifying his behavior, the work complicates the standard depictions of Vladimir Putin, reminding readers that he petitioned for NATO membership during his first term as president. Indeed, throughout Putin’s first two terms in office, at a time when he “needed the West to rebuild, reshape and reorganize Russia from the economic mess he inherited,” he presented his country as an unflinching advocate of America’s war on terror and provided logistical support for United States endeavors in Afghanistan. It was only after his subsequent reelection in 2012 that Putin’s posturing shifted to anti-Western rhetoric that promised Russian citizens a “new destiny” and the nation’s return to its former glory, which corresponded with military expeditions in Syria, Libya, Georgia, and Crimea. The roots of this book lie in Chowdhury’s undergraduate thesis at George Mason University, which in part explored Ukraine’s complex history. Two decades later, as a fellow at the Global Policy Institute with a graduate degree from Harvard University and multiple books on Middle Eastern geopolitics and nuclear arms, the author provided significant updates to his unpublished work on Ukraine. Backed by solid research found in more than 30 pages of references, this volume is a detailed, historically minded addition to the conversations surrounding Russia’s war in Ukraine. But at more than 400 pages, the book may be intimidating to some readers.
A well-written, convincing case for why Ukraine matters to the world’s future.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2022
ISBN: 9798888317846
Page Count: 421
Publisher: Fabrezan & Phillipe
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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