An uneven effort.
In 1930, Mohandas K. Gandhi led a nonviolent campaign across India to defy the imperial British salt tax, an effort that ultimately led to Indian independence and demonstrated the power of large-scale civil disobedience.
Bascomb opens with a capsule history of the British Raj (and Indian resistance to it) before zeroing in on Gandhi, his fellows in the Indian National Congress, and British viceroy Lord Irwin. From there, he recounts the planning and execution of the Salt March, drawing on Gandhi’s own words, reporters’ eyewitness descriptions, marchers’ diaries, and the contemporary writings and retrospective accounts of key players both Indian and British. Indeed, one of the book’s strengths is its presentation of the work done by freedom fighters such as Sarojini Naidu, Abbas Tyabji, and Gandhi’s son Manilal. For all the attention to Indian voices and the sheer volume of his research, however, Bascomb’s account falters, beginning with the title, a moniker Gandhi embraced with a heavy irony Bascomb does not convey. Bascomb’s repetition of the slur “Untouchables” in referring to the Dalits—a name he never introduces—is inexplicable. While the epilogue complicates Gandhi’s legacy somewhat, it does not do so with the rigorous scrutiny now underway in India, eliding, for instance, Gandhi’s early anti-Black views. Thaker’s occasional illustrations help readers visualize events.
An uneven effort. (bibliography, source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781338701999
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic Focus
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too.
Abridged but not toned down, this young-readers version of an ex-SEAL sniper’s account (SEAL Team Six, 2011) of his training and combat experiences in Operation Desert Storm and the first Battle of Mogadishu makes colorful, often compelling reading.
“My experiences weren’t always enjoyable,” Wasdin writes, “but they were always adrenaline-filled!” Not to mention testosterone-fueled. He goes on to ascribe much of his innate toughness to being regularly beaten by his stepfather as a child and punctuates his passage through the notoriously hellacious SEAL training with frequent references to other trainees who fail or drop out. He tears into the Clinton administration (whose “support for our troops had sagged like a sack of turds”), indecisive commanders and corrupt Italian “allies” for making such a hash of the entire Somalian mission. In later chapters he retraces his long, difficult physical and emotional recovery from serious wounds received during the “Black Hawk Down” operation, his increasing focus on faith and family after divorce and remarriage and his second career as a chiropractor.
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too. (acronym/ordinance glossary, adult level reading list) (Memoir. 12-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01643-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction.
The wild freedom of the imagination and the heart, and the tragedy of lives ended just as success is within view—such a powerful story is that of the Brontë children.
Reef’s gracefully plotted, carefully researched account focuses on Charlotte, whose correspondence with friends, longer life and more extensive experience outside the narrow milieu of Haworth, including her acquaintance with the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who became her biographer, revealed more of her personality. She describes the Brontë children’s early losses of their mother and then their two oldest siblings, conveying the imaginative, verbally rich life of children who are essentially orphaned but share both the wild countryside and the gifts of story. Brother Branwell’s tragic struggle with alcohol and opium is seen as if offstage, wounding to his sisters and his father but sad principally because he never found a way to use literature to save himself. Reef looks at the 19th-century context for women writers and the reasons that the sisters chose to publish only under pseudonyms—and includes a wonderful description of the encounter in which Anne and Charlotte revealed their identities to Charlotte’s publisher. She also includes brief, no-major-spoilers summaries of the sisters’ novels, inviting readers to connect the dots and to understand how real-life experience was transformed into fiction.
A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction. (notes and a comprehensive bibliography) (Biography. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-57966-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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