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 virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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