A man who knows whereof he speaks makes painfully clear the meaning of the abstract term "human rights."
Méndez, currently the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture, was imprisoned in Argentina for 18 months and tortured so severely that he begged his captors to kill him. Released in 1977 on the condition that he leave the country, he now lives in the Washington, D.C., where he has long been an activist, heading several human-rights organizations. With the assistance of activist and poet Wentworth (The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle, 2010, etc.), Méndez examines the uses of arbitrary detention, torture, disappearances, rendition and genocide in countries around the world. Along with the usual suspects—Argentina, Bosnia, El Salvador, Rwanda, Sudan (the list is long)—the United States also comes under scrutiny, with the Bush administration getting especially bad marks for policies initiated during what it defined as the War on Terror. Méndez is also disappointed in the Obama administration's reforms, but notes that in America, independent nongovernmental forces such as investigative journalism and organizations like Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union are working to expose and correct violations of human rights. In the chapters on law, justice and accountability, the author traces the development of international agreements, such as the Rome Statute of 1998 establishing the International Criminal Court, and credits the UN for its work in mediation, conflict resolution and peacekeeping missions. What is needed, he argues, is the political will to build mechanisms for detecting and preventing crimes against humanity, and thus far he finds that developed democracies are falling short. His topic is sober, and Méndez treats it as such, writing of horrific events with little emotion, even when he was personally involved. A fact-filled, well-researched analysis. A good companion to Kathryn Sikkink’s The Justice Cascade (2011).
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-230-11233-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
