A captivating account of three revolutionaries and the intrepid journalists who brought their stories to the world.
Present at the revolutions.
Hall, professor of modern history at the University of Leeds, England, divides his history into six “epic journeys”: Lenin’s 2,000 miles to Petrograd from exile in Switzerland, Mao’s 6,000-mile “Long March” across China in 1934-35, Fidel Castro’s 1956 return to Cuba from Mexico, and three American journalists’ travels to track them down. Socialist activist John Reed (1887-1920) arrived in Russia in August 1917. He had little sympathy with the March revolution that overthrew the czar because its leaders were conventional liberals, but Bolshevik rhetoric thrilled him. Witnessing the October revolution, he not only admired Lenin but participated in his government. His 1919 account, Ten Days That Shook the World, received a great deal of attention despite its politics and remains a journalistic classic. With the Chinese civil war raging and a rebel army newly established in the distant northwest, journalist Edgar Snow (1905-1972) wangled permission to enter the area. Aware that Snow was an establishment figure, Mao and his cadre welcomed him with open arms; his flattering portrayal, Red Star Over China, released in 1937, was a worldwide bestseller and revelation at a time when almost no one knew anything about its subject. Herbert Matthews (1900-1977) was a middle-aged New York Times editor in 1957 when Castro, an obscure figure leading a purported rebellion against Cuba’s dictator, let it be known that he would welcome an interview. In an odd parallel with Snow’s experience, Matthews was conducted into a wilderness, and his articles launched the popular image of Fidel as a romantic revolutionary committed to bringing justice to his people. The reporters’ reputations suffered after their subjects took power—rebellions against unpopular governments usually get good press until they succeed.
A captivating account of three revolutionaries and the intrepid journalists who brought their stories to the world.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780571367153
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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