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A gripping personal narrative of the struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace

Dennis Ross, the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is that rare figure who is respected by all parties: Democrats and Republicans, Palestinians and Israelis, presidents and people on the street in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Washington, D.C.

The Missing Peace is far and away the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever published. The maneuverings of both sides, and of the United States as well, are described. For the first time, the backroom negotiations, the dramatic and often secretive nature of the process, and the reasons for its faltering are on display for all to see.

Ross recounts the peace process in detail from 1988 to the breakdown of talks in early 2001 that prompted the so-called second Intifada. It's all here: Camp David, Oslo, Geneva, Egypt, and other summits; the assassination of Yitzak Rabin; the rise and fall of Benjamin Netanyahu; the very different characters and strategies of Rabin, Yasir Arafat, and Bill Clinton; and the first steps of the Palestinian Authority.

The issues Ross explains with unmatched clarity--negotiations over borders, Israeli security, the Palestinian "right of return"--are the issues behind today's headlines. The Missing Peace explains, as no other book has, why Middle East peace is so difficult to achieve.

• Sales Rank: #436572 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.53" w x 6.00" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 872 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This is the ultimate insider's account of the roller-coaster ride of the Middle East peace process from 1988 to the breakdown of talks in 2001. More than anything else, Ross, the chief U.S. negotiator for Presidents Bush 41 and Clinton, has written an epic diplomat's handbook. We see the moves and countermoves on both sides, the preparation that goes into any statement or gesture, the backroom wheeling and dealing and the dance of language and meaning. Ross lays out, in painstaking detail, the "one step forward, two steps back" approach that finally led to such breakthroughs as the handshake on the White House lawn. He offers detailed accounts of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, the rise and fall of Benjamin Netanyahu and a picture of Arafat "seeking to have it both ways... La-Nam (no and yes in Arabic)." Ross's critical eye paints a vivid picture of the very different characters and strategies of Arafat, Barak and Clinton, and what led to the failure at Camp David. While Ross lands in the blame-Arafat camp, he is not without criticism of Barak and Clinton. Tragically, for all those who follow this region, Ross's book does not present a hopeful picture; the litany of failures sounds like a broken record: "We left the region hopeful, but that hope was premature"; "Once again, however, our best-laid plans went awry." Sure to garner its share of controversy and media attention, this work of history in the making is essential reading for anyone interested in why we are where we are in the Middle East. Maps not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Ross, chief Middle East peace negotiator in the presidential administrations of both George H. Bush and Bill Clinton, provides a masterful, riveting, and scrupulously fair account of a process that now seems like a noble failure. Ross tracks the slow unfolding of the "peace process" from the first tentative steps toward dialogue at the Madrid Conference to the collapse at Camp David and the descent into the ongoing violence of the second Intifada. There are wonderful insights here into the strengths and weaknesses of the numerous players in this drama, including, of course, Arafat, Peres, Barak, Assad, and more obscure but still significant figures. Ross writes eloquently and sadly of missed opportunities, and his frustration with the obstinacy and pettiness of Arafat is evident. Surprisingly, given the current level of violence, Ross concludes with an optimistic assessment of the long-term chances for peace. This is a brilliant and important insider's account that is essential reading for anyone wishing to better understand this seemingly intractable problem. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"The Missing Peace is the definitive and gripping account of the sometimes exhilarating, often tortured twists and turns in the Middle East peace process, viewed from the front row by one of its major players, Dennis Ross. No one worked harder for peace than Dennis. He gave it everything he had and served our nation very well. Now he has provided us with a rich account of what happened that is essential to understanding both the past and the possible paths to the future." --President William J. Clinton

"The Missing Peace is a brilliant behind-the-scenes account of history in the making. Only Dennis Ross could have written such a lively, provocative and insightful book. This definitive telling of a fascinating and tragic tale will be indispensable to any serious student of the Arab-Israeli dispute." --Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

"I've never known anyone so deeply committed to the cause of peace in the Middle East as Dennis Ross. This book reflects not only that dedication but his brilliance in writing about it in a colorful and comprehensive way." --Warren Christopher, former U.S. Secretary of State

"The Missing Peace is amazing narrative. Ross, who knows Mideast diplomacy better than any other American, does something essential if there is ever to be peace: quite simply, he tells the truth. In doing so, he dispells the myths that block a deal. This is the one essential book that should be read by everyone who cares about this crucial topic." --Walter Isaacson, President of the Aspen Institute and author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

"Few Americans have had a more intimate involvement with the complex issues that divide the Middle East than Dennis Ross, as U.S. envoy and chief negotiator under two Presidents. The Missing Peace presents a candid, thoughtful and detailed picture of the process and the participants." --Dr. Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State

"Dennis Ross was at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for twelve momentous and tumultuous years. He provides in fascinating detail his account of what happened and his reasoning as events transpired. He rendered a great public service as tireless negotiator and has done so again with this well-written and instructive book--a classic must-read for anyone interested in the Middle East." --George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State

"The Missing Peace is imbued with wisdom, and it analytical content is vital in helping understand the complex facets of the Middle East. It is written with a mix of empathy and sadness, in character with the conflicting nature of the region." --Shimon Peres, former Israeli Prime Minister

Most helpful customer reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
How the Peace Was Lost
By Omer Belsky
There are two quips by former Israeli Foreign Secretary Abba Eben, that seem appropriate to reflect upon whenever one discusses the Israeli-Arab attempts at peace negotiations "The Arabs" Mr. Eben had famously said "Never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity". The Israeli government, on the other hand "only does the right thing after having exhausted every other possibility"*

"The Missing Peace" is the frustrating but illuminating memoir of Dennis Ross, the Chief American negotiator in the Israeli-Arab peace process. Ross's book is an exhaustive record of Ross's schedule: No meeting is too trivial to recount, no quarrel too tiresome to include, no thought too minor to mention.

Ross's focus is squarely on the Israeli- Arab negotiations, and specifically the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian meetings (with the Jordanians guest starring for one chapter, and the Egyptians, Saudis and Moroccans making sporadic appearances). If you are looking for a comprehensive treatment of Israeli-Arab relationships, or the Peace Process in the 1990s, look elsewhere: This is squarely about the meetings, negotiations, and tactics. Worst still, because the US had only a limited role in the Oslo accords, the very start of the historic process between Israelis and the Palestinian Liberation Organization is under reported.

In his conclusion, Ross concedes that "negotiations do not take place in a vacuum" and that the broader picture, and the Israeli and Palestinian publics have to be considered. But Ross's book fails to include them; We get astonishingly little about some of the major players in this drama: Israeli Refusniks, Palestinian Militants, and Oslo Skeptics generally. Given Ross's friendship with Natan Sheransky, then leader of Israel's Center-right Israel Ba'alyah Party, it's astounding how little insight we get into him, or anyone else not intimately involved in the negotiations. Even events that had major effects on the negotiations, such as the construction in Har Homa, are explained in the context of the negotiations only, and not in a wider context.

Within the process itself, Ross's approach is remarkably free of analysis. The main feature of the Oslo accords was its piecemeal construction - instead of coming up with a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian predicament, the architects of Oslo conceived a series of steps, spreading over years, between the initial signing and the final accords. The idea was to get the Israelis and Palestinians used to working together; In hindsight, that clearly failed. The obvious shortfall was that, if the process was to collapse in some point, a heavily armed Palestinian Authority would inevitably clash with the Israelis, leading to many casualties on both sides. Since that is exactly what happened, some meditation about the original decision is in order. Ross offers none, save for Rabin's assertion that this piecemeal progress was as far as the Israeli public was ready to go at the time.

Sometimes, Ross's narrative demonstrated how utterly incompetent the people who run the world are: Israeli premier Rabin and Syrian President Asad talked past each other regarding the meaning of "Full withdrawal" for about a year. Later, Benjamin Netanyahu's envoy to the Asad, Ron Lauder, actively deceived the following Israeli Premier Ehud Barak, and the Americans, regarding the agreements reached with Asad. Palestinian Chairman Arafat meanwhile, was childish and prune to fantasies; in one of the worst, he insisted that the Ancient Jewish temple was in Nablus, not Jerusalem (p. 718).

To summarize an 800 odd word book in a several paragraphs: the bottom line in the Israeli-Syrian negotiations was that Israelis and Syrians were out of Sync. Barak's mood about a summit meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Shara swinged sharply. By the time he became committed to a deal, the Syrians were uninterested.

With the Palestinians, the fixing the blame is both simpler and more complicated: Ross clearly sees Arafat as "not up to ending the conflict" (p. 756). It's hard to argue against that position; in the end, Barak went further then anyone could have expected. Saudi Prince Bandar told Ross "If Arafat does not accept what is available now, it won't be a tragedy, it will be a crime" (p. 748).

Reading Ross's account, I became more convinced in my earlier conviction that the main fault in the fall of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process lies with Israeli Premier Ehud Barak. Barak went far (one of the surprises I had was that he probably went too far - most Palestinians would have settled for less, p. 719), truly striving for peace, and Clinton accommodated him in bringing all pressure on Arafat to accept or offer a reasonable counter proposal - but since Arafat could not make peace with the Israelis, all this effort was in naught. Although Ross does not necessarily accepts the thesis that Arafat was behind the outbreak of the 2000 al Aqsa Intifada, he clearly did nothing to prevent it. By all accounts, Arafat, feeling the pressure on him, released it in the only was he could: through violence.

But there were those on the Arab Side, principally current President Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei, who genuinely strived for peace. Arafat could not have lived for ever - why not wait for the next generation of Palestinian leaders and make the deal with them? Ross argues that the Israelis and the Americans had to find out whether Arafat had it in him to deliver (pp 767-769). Fine, but they needed a contingency plan in case he did not. Alas, Barak and the Americans had none. Instead of probing whether Arafat was capable of making a final deal, they pressured him as hard as they could, forcing him to chose between Peace and War. Arafat, who never liked to be forced to make choices such as these, was forced to make it. Six years and thousands of casualties later, we are still paying the price for Barak's hubris.

*(Feb 2. 2009 correction: One of the comentators below pointed out that Eban's quote was not about Israel, but about "men and nations" generally)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A wonderful book
By John K
I have only read a few books on the Middle East and one other on the peace process being "Waging Peace" by Itamar Rabinovich. Dennis Ross is committed to the Midele East peace process. It is very clear that he has been at the "coal face", the one who has guided the key players in their neogotations. The book is a fantastic insight into what went on behind the scenes that were played out in the international media. Apart from a blow-by-blow description that would appeal to any history student focused on the Palesinian-Israeli peace process, there are a number of reasons why anybody vaguely interested in this subject would enjoy this book: (1) It is a thriller! The expression "truth stranger than fiction" tales on true meaning as this book is like a "cannot put down" suspense novel. (2) The story of the peace process is recorded in great detail (3) Ross gives us hope that somewhere in the distant future the Palestinian-Israel issue can be resolved. Anybody reading this book will learn a great deal about what the truth is in the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy. I loved this book and read most of it, certainly 550 out of 800 pages, over the Easter weekend. This is a great book and is written in elegant style. Read the Publishers' Week and Washington Post reviews but buy this book even if it is from Amazon Marketplace, It is a "must have" and a gripping, cannot put down book to read

45 of 59 people found the following review helpful.
Dealing with diplomatic pride and prejudice
By Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Dennis Ross is certainly an authority on the story of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. His book offers a historic background of this conflict, the version of each party and the diplomacy buildup that sometimes led to breakthroughs in peacemaking and in other times reached the brink of peace but later stalled.

The book is unnecessarily long (872 pages), but is entertaining as it includes anecdotal details and some other less important details about how Ross boarded planes and took showers prior to his meetings.

The book also sheds light on how, on several occasions, arrogance, pride, prejudice, electoral considerations and pulling diplomatic stunts to muster further support of followers have always affected peace negotiations.

It also shows that terrorists and other anti-peace factions succeeded in so many instances in delaying peaceful efforts and in other instances completely sabotaged them.

Ross has been a witness of the diplomatic effort between Israelis and Arabs, which was interrupted in 2000. His book is certainly a reference document for all those interested in taking a deeper look into the Middle East conflict and international attempts at resolving it.

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* Free Ebook The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems, by John Berryman

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A lively sampling from the work of one of the most celebrated and daring poets of the twentieth century

John Berryman was perhaps the most idiosyncratic American poet of the twentieth century. Best known for the painfully sad and raucously funny cycle of Dream Songs, he wrote passionately: of love and despair, of grief and laughter, of longing for a better world and coming to terms with this one. "The Heart Is Strange," a new selection of his poems, along with reissues of "Berryman's Sonnets," "77 Dream Songs," and the complete "Dream Songs," marks the centenary of his birth.
"The Heart Is Strange "includes a generous selection from across Berryman's varied career: from his earliest poems, which show him learning the craft, to his breakthrough masterpiece, "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet," then to his mature verses, which find the poet looking back upon his lovers and youthful passions, and finally, to his late poems, in which he battles with sobriety and an increasingly religious sensibility.
The defiant joy and wild genius of Berryman's work has been obscured by his struggles with mental illness and alcohol, his tempestuous relationships with women, and his suicide. This volume, which includes three previously uncollected poems and an insightful introduction by the editor Daniel Swift, celebrates the whole Berryman: tortured poet and teasing father, passionate lover and melancholy scholar. It is a perfect introduction to one of the finest bodies of work yet produced by an American poet.

• Sales Rank: #1453278 in Books
• Published on: 2014-10-21
• Released on: 2014-10-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.32" h x .93" w x 6.02" l, .0 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review

“Berryman is arguably the most irreverent and inventive . . . of the confessional American poets that emerged in the late 1950s and early '60s . . . [In The Heart Is Strange] you see Berryman's voice and tics develop--his playful use of grammar and nonsense words, his contrasts of comedy and despair, his intimate style.” ―Andrew Travers, The Aspen Times

“It is thrilling, if sometimes unnerving, to be in the presence of an antic imagination. This same imagination is reflected beautifully in Berryman's distinctive body of work … A new collection of selected poems, The Heart Is Strange, judiciously edited and introduced by Daniel Swift . . . give[s] us an opportunity to see afresh what he made of his careening journey through our literary landscape.” ―Christopher Merrill, Los Angeles Review of Books

“What he is most remembered for, though there are glories in his other work, is The Dream Songs, which you could think of as a poème-fleuve: he found (and there is an American tradition of this stuff going back to Whitman) an expansive, accretive, flexible open form that allowed him to somehow drift net the jetsam of a life and the flotsam of his place in the century . . . Berryman is (relatively) unusual among poets because he's funny. Daniel Swift, who has edited some handsome centenary reissues of Berryman's work for Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the US . . . suggests that his status as a minor major poet--his not quite getting his due--is in part down to this. People still don't think funny poets are as important as the non-funny kind. But Berryman is the proper sort of funny: the funny that is involved with heartbreak . . . The Dream Songs is a slapstick Book of Job . . . But funny as Berryman is, he's a poet of mourning . . . You find in him remarkable technical command, deep and riddling allusiveness, killer gags and an antic harlequinade of aspects and personae that recalls Looney Toons as much as it does The Waste Land. But you also find a voice: this character Henry, who is half Berryman and half not, and who lives on the page and speaks to you. The voice looks easy to imitate or parody--with its fractured syntax, its tics and ampersands--but, as many who have tried discover, it isn't . . . Here is poetry that is not only heard: it buttonholes you.” ―Sam Leith, The Guardian on John Berryman

“[The Dream Songs are] one of the most audacious (and intimidating) achievements in 20th century American poetry . . . Very few are bold enough to try a feat similar to Berryman's today, and even fewer have actually succeeded in writing poetry that transcends the artless solipsism of workshop verse. In that rarefied latter category belong Patricia Lockwood and Michael Robbins, both of whom are young and profane and unafraid. Their forefather is Berryman, who in Mistress Bradstreet writes from the voice of a 17th century poetess . . . who knows that if you're not writing about longing and dying, you might as well be composing infomercial jingles . . . [Berryman's] is a poetry of anxiety and attention deficit, as earnest as an episode of Glee, as revealingly scattered as the tabs left open on your browser. It is also surprisingly political for a poet who effortlessly channels Sir Thomas Wyatt's lyrical seductions, a poet who often seemed lost in the dim labyrinths of his own mind. Berryman was weirdly attuned to the chaos of the Cold War . . . It can, indeed, be as furious as Charlie Parker bebop, full of what Berryman himself called ‘sad wild riffs.' . . . Reading Berryman is a reminder that poetry is sound, that it should be enjoyed as music, not words alone . . . The best thing one can do for Berryman today is to forget him and to remember his poems.” ―Alex Nazaryan, Newsweek on John Berryman

“These books make a fierce little pile. When you aren't looking, they may scald a hole through your bedside table . . . There are excellent things in The Heart Is Strange, among them a remarkable poem called ‘Mr Pou & the Alphabet,' which has not previously appeared among Berryman's published poetry . . . This poem, in its stealthy way, begins to seem like one of the great divorce poems in the English language.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times on John Berryman

“Berryman's own traumas are balanced against the wreckage of his literary generation, which he laments, and the sleaze and rubble of mid-century America, which he assails . . . Among the poets he counted as his peers only Lowell has produced as large a body of work which so vividly spoke to its time and continues to reverberate beyond it.” ―Robert Shaw, Poetry on John Berryman

About the Author
John Berryman (1914-1972) was an American poet and scholar. He won the Pulitzer Prize for 77 Dream Songs in 1965 and the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize for His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, a continuation of the Dream Songs, in 1969.

Daniel Swift has written for Bookforum, The New York Times Book Review, and The Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War.

Daniel Swift has written for Bookforum, The New York Times Book Review, and The Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War.

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A fine new Selected Poems.
By Todd Young
This is a great new collection released for Berryman's centenary last year. This only oversight is an nearly unavoidable one. The Dream Songs, his greatest work, is not included. It however, stands on its own, and is available separately. There are quibbles, as there are with any selected poems volume, but this is a fine collection. Get this, along with The Dream Songs, and you'll have a good overview of Berryman.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Not the Dream Songs
By Dr. Jeffrey Schnitzer
Not his best work. The great Dream Songs are missing, but the stuff included is good. Oh, and none of the poetry is new.

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Named one of the best books of 2014 by NPR, The New Yorker, and The Boston Globe

When Glenn Kurtz stumbles upon an old family film in his parents' closet in Florida, he has no inkling of its historical significance or of the impact it will have on his life. The film, shot long ago by his grandfather on a sightseeing trip to Europe, includes shaky footage of Paris and the Swiss Alps, with someone inevitably waving at the camera. Astonishingly, David Kurtz also captured on color 16mm film the only known moving images of the thriving, predominantly Jewish town of Nasielsk, Poland, shortly before the community's destruction. "Blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that lay just ahead," he just happened to visit his birthplace in 1938, a year before the Nazi occupation. Of the town's three thousand Jewish inhabitants, fewer than one hundred would survive.
Glenn Kurtz quickly recognizes the brief footage as a crucial link in a lost history. "The longer I spent with my grandfather's film," he writes, "the richer and more fragmentary its images became." Every image, every face, was a mystery that might be solved. Soon he is swept up in a remarkable journey to learn everything he can about these people. After restoring the film, which had shrunk and propelled across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; and into archives, basements, cemeteries, and even an irrigation ditch at an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield as he looks for shards of Nasielsk's Jewish history.
One day, Kurtz hears from a young woman who had watched the video on the Holocaust Museum's website. As the camera panned across the faces of children, she recognized her grandfather as a thirteen-year-old boy. Moszek Tuchendler of Nasielsk was now eighty-six-year-old Maurice Chandler of Florida, and when Kurtz meets him, the lost history of Nasielsk comes into view. Chandler's laser-sharp recollections create a bridge between two worlds, and he helps Kurtz eventually locate six more survivors, including a ninety-six-year-old woman who also appears in the film, standing next to the man she would later marry.
Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. "I began to catch fleeting glimpses of the living town," Kurtz writes, "a cruelly narrow sample of its relationships, contradictions, scandals." Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the most important record of a vibrant town on the brink of extinction. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a poignant yet unsentimental exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world.

• Sales Rank: #307090 in Books
• Published on: 2014-11-18
• Released on: 2014-11-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.28" h x 1.37" w x 6.30" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Review

“Kurtz's quest to learn about the lost world depicted in his grandfather's home movie is at the heart of this deeply moving, gorgeously written book.” ―Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

“[An] expansive, beautifully rendered micro-history. . . In the pages of Glenn Kurtz's marvelous book, the ghosts from those three minutes are breathtakingly brought to life.” ―Louise Steinman, Los Angeles Times

“An impressive feat of historical research . . . In a genre so often preoccupied with the recitation of horrors, Three Minutes in Poland is the rare work that seems more about people than about ghosts.” ―Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post

“In this captivating book, Mr. Kurtz tries to reconstruct Jewish Nasielsk, knowing he will fail--not only because he arrives too late but because memory is by nature incomplete.” ―Dara Horn, The Wall Street Journal

“Three Minutes in Poland--along with the remarkable four-year quest it documents--is an act of reverence, as well as a feat of archival reconstruction. Kurtz's patience, energy and appetite for detail seem boundless, and they gradually bring a community--a microcosm of Polish Jewry, with all its political and religious factions and class divisions--(almost) to life . . . The book accumulates elegiac power . . . Three Minutes in Poland describes with horrifying precision the ordeals that preceded the murders of most of Nasielsk's Jewish community. But equally compelling pages document how Chandler, with guile, luck and some Polish help, escapes the Warsaw ghetto, took a non-Jewish Polish identity and managed to survive.” ―Julia Klein, The Chicago Tribune

“Kurtz weaves . . . a haunting web of contingency” ―The New Yorker

“Kurtz's tenacious research and sensitive reporting make this book a gem.” ―The Christian Science Monitor, The 10 best books of November

“Engrossing, exhaustively researched.” ―Jessica Zack, San Francisco Chronicle

“A rare glimpse of a lost world.” ―Moment magazine

“A pilgrimage of the highest order.” ―Elaine Margolin, Jewish Journal

“Three Minutes in Poland begins as the story of an old family film rediscovered and veers into an important tale of Polish shtetls during World War II. It is intensely moving and brilliantly researched, and it reads like a thriller.” ―Elie Wiesel, author of Night

“A masterpiece. With scrupulous intelligence and deep compassion, Glenn Kurtz tells this stupendous, terrifying, and ultimately consoling story in a way that fully honors the material. The reader grieves for what was lost, but is also alert to the miracle that anything was saved at all. Kurtz has done us all a great service in rescuing this tale from oblivion. Three Minutes In Poland is destined to be a classic.” ―Teju Cole, author of Open City

“Glenn Kurtz's beautifully written book is many things at once: a family memoir, a page-turning mystery, a penetrating look at one of the darkest chapters in human history. Above all, it's a powerful testament to the singular worth of every life. That's the passion that inspired Kurtz through his years of research, and I can't think of a worthier one.” ―Rebecca Goldstein, author of Mazel

“Glenn Kurtz leads the reader on an inspiring journey through the forgotten past in this meticulous work of historical reconstruction. I was amazed by the patient, forensic skill with which he followed the trail of a handful of images into a vibrant array of voices and visual memories. By helping his many interview subjects remember details of a world they themselves didn't know they still carried inside, Kurtz discovers life where there had seemed only to be loss.” ―George Prochnik, author of The Impossible Exile

“With nothing more to go on than three scant minutes in a family film, Glenn Kurtz has meticulously pieced together a luminous, searing story of a place and its people. I read this beautiful book wishing for nothing less than to turn back the clock and change the course of history. Kurtz is a restrained and elegant writer, and Three Minutes in Poland is not only a magnificent literary achievement, but a human one.” ―Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion

About the Author

Glenn Kurtz is the author of Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music and the host of Conversations on Practice, a series of public conversations about writing held at McNally Jackson Books in New York City.

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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Film and faces from a destroyed past...
By Jill Meyer
In summer of 1938, Liza and David Kurtz and three companions took a trip to Europe from their home in the United States. They toured central Europe and several of the places they visited were in Poland. Both had emigrated from small villages in Poland years before - David from Nasielsk and Liza from Berezne. While traveling, David Kurtz took film of their various stops, including three minutes in one of the Polish villages they visited. This film, along with other family photos and albums followed them into retirement, until it was uncovered at the Kurtz's son's house. The film was not in very good condition but was able to be restored by technicians. And what a find this film turned out to be. The Kurtz's grandson - Glenn Kurtz - has written a book, "Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film" which explains how these lost images - once identified - opened up a world thought destroyed by the Nazis in the early 1940's.

Glenn Kurtz is a member of what I call the "Second Generation"; they are the grandchildren of those who survived the Holocaust. MY generation is the "First Generation" and our stories have been told for the past 40 years of living with parents who went through hell in Europe. Now our children are searching and questioning and writing their books. (Another excellent "Second Generation" book is "Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind" by Sarah Wildman.)

As the Kurtzes had been dead for many years, it was left for their daughter, Shirley, and their grandchildren to identify the place and people in the film. The three minutes of film of the Kurtzes returning to a village was misidentified at first as Liza Kurtz's home village of Berezne. Further examination correctly identified the village as Nasielsk. With help from various Holocaust museums and, of course, the internet, several people and places in the film were identified and Glenn Kurtz set out to speak to these survivors, some 70 years after the filming. Several were still living, though quite old, and they were surprised to see pictures of themselves and their families and friends from 1938. Memories were stoked and stories were told of this time before Europe fell apart and most of the people in the film were murdered. Stories told by survivors led to other people from Nasielsk and their children being identified as still alive. Kurtz also writes about his visit to the current-day village of Nasielsk, where the Jews of the past were just that, of the past.

Was it chance or luck that a few of the people in Nasielsk, Poland shown in the film gleefully greeting their visitors from the United States in 1938 survived the mass killings and deportations to Treblinka and Auschwitz? Did those people - both living in Poland and visiting - have any idea that slightly a year after these pictures were taken that the lives of those remaining in Poland would be torn apart? Very few people can predict the future and often what is predicted is considered outlandish and impossible. The villagers of Nasielsk - some who had left for Palestine and to other safe havens - could not have envisioned the wholesale slaughter of the Jews of Europe.

Glenn Kurtz has written an excellent look at a doomed Polish village. It is both an interesting and horrifying look at the past. At what once was and those people who made it what it was.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Highly recommended
By Jo Ann
Great book! Glenn Kurtz takes us through the steps he took to learn about the Polish community captured in a vacation film taken by his grandparents in 1938. I was immediately engrossed in his journey and awed that he so skillfully brings together his findings. I came away with a sense of place and time – the normalcy of a community and how that changed so horribly with the Holocaust. I hope Kurtz writes a sequel as more families find him and share their stories.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Meditation on a Lost World
By Yours Truly
The three minutes of Polish village film footage that Glenn Kurtz finds in his parents' Florida home provide a framework for a thoughtful investigation of and meditation on the fate of the roughly 3000 Jewish villagers expelled from it during the Holocaust. The cinematographer is Kurtz's paternal grandfather, David, who in 1938 added the village of Nasielsk to a tour of several European capitals with his wife and friends. Glenn Kurtz never met him, so the film's characters and the context of the visit are a puzzle that this memoir beautifully explores.

Once a version of the film is posted on the U.S. Holocaust Museum's website, 87 year-old Morry Chandler, now of Michigan and Florida, becomes a pivotal character in the drama that unfolds. Chandler's daughter recognizes him in the street filmed by David Kurtz. A teenager when the Germans invaded Poland, Chandler used his strengths of body and mind to escape more than once and eventually pass as a Catholic farmworker until the end of the war. He becomes Glenn Kurtz's guide to the village.

The author of a previous memoir about playing classical guitar, Kurtz brings together the individual stories of less than a dozen survivors and the life they remember. What might in another author's hands have become a clumsy collection is woven into a single narrative history, a memorial and a contemporary work of art.

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** Download , by Any Means Necessary: America's Secret Air War in the Cold War, by William E. Burrows

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The "Blind Man's Bluff" of aerial espionage.

Unknown to the public and cloaked in the utmost secrecy, the United States flew missions against the Communist bloc almost continuously during the Cold War in a desperate effort to collect intelligence and find targets for all-out nuclear war. The only hint of the relentless, clandestine operations came when one of the planes was shot down. Many of the air force and navy flyers were killed on the top secret missions. But now, for the first time, award-winning historian William E. Burrows shows that others were captured by the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, and were tortured, imprisoned, and killed, while their loved ones grieved and their government looked the other way. In an effort to improve relations with Russia, Washington is still looking the other way, though it pretends otherwise.

Burrows has interviewed scores of men who flew these "black" missions, as well as the widows and children of those who never returned, all of whom want the full story finally told. He has done so with an eye to this story's immensely human dimension. By Any Means Necessary is not about airplanes, but about the people who've sacrificed their lives in the interests of national security.

• Sales Rank: #854685 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.40" h x 6.30" w x 9.32" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
When a Chinese fighter collided with an American EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane on April 1, 2001, it was merely the most recent incident in a long string dating back to the end of WWII. Burrows (Deep Black), a professor of journalism at New York University and founder and director of its Science and Environmental Reporting Program, uses a host of personal interviews among his many sources, and details for the first time the secret American reconnaissance missions against the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and North Vietnam. The specter of Communist aggression coupled with the threat of nuclear war meant that America had to have accurate knowledge of enemies and their military capabilities. But Burrows also examines the issue of intelligence gathering from the Soviet viewpoint. Having been attacked by erstwhile ally Germany without provocation and having seen the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, the Soviets were understandably edgy when American planes began buzzing their borders and occasionally flying directly over their airspace. Frustrated, the Soviets struck back. From 1950 to 1969, Soviet fighters shot down 16 American planes in situations that resulted in loss of life. An appendix provides a chronological listing of these planes and the names of the crew members who perished. Most planes were converted bombers or tankers, crammed with all sorts of electronic eavesdropping devices. The whole game was generally called "ferreting." Nikita Khrushchev's joy when U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured after his plane was downed on May 1, 1960, is understandable. The Soviets announced the capture, but the Americans never apologized directly and still haven't. The ultimate tragedy in this cat and mouse game befell the families of the missing airmen who were often executed if captured alive. Burrows is to be congratulated for superb research and stellar writing in this first look behind the secret curtain of intelligence gathering. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)Forecast: This book, driven by interest in the still-fresh Chinese incident and by its pwn merits, should be a breakaway bestseller. Look for Burrows all over the media and for massive review coverage.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When World War II ended, the Cold War began. Its frontline warriors were the pilots and crews who flew air reconnaissance missions against Communist-bloc countries. For this purpose, bombers were converted to aerial spy work, often with disastrous results for the crews. As crews were lost or shot down, an effort was finally made to improve the planes and organize air reconnaissance into one unit the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Formed under Curtis LeMay, it provided not only air reconnaissance but immediate military response to any country that might attack the United States. Higher-flying aircraft, like the U-2, made air reconnaissance safer for crews, but surveillance with total safety wasn't achieved until satellites were launched. Burrows (journalism, New York Univ.; Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security) tells the story of Cold War air reconnaissance with emphasis on the individuals involved, the sacrifices they made, and the way the U.S. government turned a blind eye to those who served. A fascinating book that public and academic libraries will want to purchase, especially in view of the recent spy plane episode with China. Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Burrows is to be congratulated for superb research and stellar writing." -- Starred Publishers Weekly, August 13, 2001

"Burrows puts the history of America's secret air war during the Cold War into a clear perspective." -- Francis Gary Powers, Jr., Founder, The Cold War Musuem

"Burrows tells the story of Cold War Air reconnaissance with emphasis on the individuals involved...Fascinating." -- Library Journal, August 2001

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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
The Cold War through a different prism
By Grunt
An introduction into a semi-secret world the average American knows nothing about, this is (a part of) the true story of aerial confrontations between the USA and USSR that occasionally made the Cold War anything but cold. An excellent overview of what really went on. And, Yes. It could happen again.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
The Cold War that cost lives.
By Kevin M Quigg
At the beginning of this book, it quotes Teller as saying at least the Cold War did not cost any lives. Burrows points out in this book that the Cold War did cost lives. At least 15 planes were shot down, and close to a hundred Air Force and Navy airmen were killed. The U.S. Government hid the fact that many flights were ferreting radar information and bombing sights in case of offensive nuclear war. The Soviets and Chinese did the same thing, even if their propaganda said otherwise. The real losers in this conflict were the families of those airmen who were lost. The government lied to them to cover their activities.

This book was released after the Navy ferret airplane collided with the Chinese jet off Hainen. This incident was also described. However shootdowns of U.S. aircraft took place as far back as 1948. Some of these shootdowns were over international airspace. All participants in this conflict were not innocent. The U.S. needed information and these flights provided them this information. The end of the air duels happened in 1970 when satellites took over the intelligence gathering over sensitive Cold War targets.

This is a nice informative read about a little known conflict in the Cold War. I was surprised about the detail the author put into the air clashes. He also told the human story of the losses on the families. A good read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
FEET TO THE FIRE!
By Alan Rockman
I remember reading stories of Americans, mainly servicemen, who disappeared behind the Iron Curtain following World War II. To the everlasting shame of every single President from Truman to the current occupant of the White House, we have never demanded a full accounting of their fates, not even from so-called "Democratic" Russia.

Burrows story is a sad, despairing one, of brave men who flew their reconnaisance aircraft over hostile, yes, enemy airspace without fighter jet protection, and often encountered Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean MiG fighters. He writes of that very first aircrew shot down over the Baltic in April 1950, roughly two months before the Korean War. Harry Truman, revered by so many, did absolutely nothing about it even though US Navy life rafts, filled with machine gun holes, were seen drifting off the Swedish coasts.

When the Korean War broke out, Truman refused to bomb the Chinese Army that massed along the Yalu but continued to send these unarmed planes deep into Chinese and Russian Far East airspace. The pilots who did come back would talk about flying over those eerie mountains and crystal blue lakes of Manchuria and Siberia, always on the lookout for enemy jets, and fearfully knowing that if met, they didn't stand a chance. Even if the planes were close to Japanese airspace that didn't stop the Soviets from blasting them out of the sky. One such flight was blasted out of the sky in 1952, just off the coast of Northern Japan. But instead of U.S. jets scrambling to help the crew, or U.S. Navy ships at full speed trying to rescue them - there were destroyers of the Soviet navy on-hand. Some of the American airmen seen parachuting into the sea were believed to have been picked up by these Russian ships, never to be seen again.

Most of these flights ended with the advent of satellites and the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 in May 1960. But Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon (although he did try to get a full accounting of missing U.S. personnel in Vietnam), Ford, Carter, Reagan, and even Bush and Clinton after the Soviet empire finally collapsed never even bothered to get a full accounting of what happened to these men. Only after former Soviet officers presented the widows, sons and daughters with personal items of men shot down off the Soviet coast did some word of these secret missions and the fate of these men come out - and not for all.

When a "friend" of the United States like Boris Yeltsin can rewarded a savage American traitor and Fascist like the late spy Morris Cohen with the Hero of Russia award, then it is time that we press our elected officials to demand a full accounting - and if any might still be alive a release of these American servicemen who gave their all for this country. Otherwise, what are we doing rescuing their sailors?

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"Laughter is the language of the soul," Pablo Neruda said. Among the most lasting voices of the most tumultuous (in his own words, "the saddest") century, a witness and a chronicler of its most decisive events, he is the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, the emblem of the engaged poet, an artist whose heart, always with the people, is literally consumed by passion. His work, oscillating from epic meditations on politics and history to intimate reflections on animals, food, and everyday objects, is filled with humor and affection.

This bilingual selection of more than fifty of Neruda's best poems, edited and with an introduction by the distinguished Latin American scholar Ilan Stavans and brilliantly translated by an array of well-known poets, also includes some poems previously unavailable in English. I Explain a Few Things distills the poet's brilliance to its most essential and illuminates Neruda's commitment to using the pen as a calibrator for his age.

• Sales Rank: #1073542 in Books
• Brand: Neruda, Pablo/ Stavans, Ilan (EDT)
• Published on: 2007-10-02
• Released on: 2007-10-02
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.71" h x 1.10" w x 5.23" l, 1.03 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 358 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Perhaps the most popular modern poet in the world, the Chilean-born Neruda (1904–1973) won the Nobel Prize for an enormous body of verse that includes introspective lyrics of love and lust; sinuously enthusiastic elemental odes to artichokes, watermelon, salt, Walt Whitman and the human eye; declamations in favor of the labor movement, the Communist Party and the working people of any nation; and involuted late poems of self-doubt. Perhaps no serious writer of verse since Whitman has combined so much scholarly attention with so much enthusiasm in a broad international public: unlike some Latin American peers to whom he paid homage, Neruda even at his most ambitious remained clear in his passions. Memoirist, critic and translator Stavans has culled this useful portable volume, with its facing-page English and Spanish from his far larger (1,040 pages) Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), while adding a few translations not included there: translators include Robert Bly, W.S. Merwin and Stavans himself. A particular attraction is Scottish poet Alastair Reid's version of Autumn Testament, Neruda's mid-career retrospect: I've been a great flowing river, the poet asserts, with hard ringing stones, with clear night-noises,/ with dark day-songs. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“There is something about Neruda--about the way he glorifies experience, about the spontaneity and directness of his passion--that sets him apart from other poets . . . He is among the small group of last century's great poets.” ―Mark Strand, The New Yorker on The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

“The most comprehensive single volume in English of a marvelous, inexhaustible and humane Latin-American poet, one of the 20th century's radiant lights.” ―Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post Book World, on The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

About the Author

Pablo Neruda (1904–73) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971. His books include Residence on Earth, Canto General, Extravagaria, and Isla Negra. Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College.

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Great poems; iffy translations.
By Elizabeth B.
I love Pablo Neruda's poetry, especially his odes and love poems, and this book is a great bilingual sampling of a variety of his best work. My biggest complaint is in the English translations--I know that translating poetry is difficult, but the English versions often change the meaning of the Spanish poems in a way that destroys the tone and imagery of Neruda's original work. I would have liked to see something a little closer to the original spirit of Neruda's work. Still a great sampling all-in-all!

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A Master Poet
By David E. Jones
Pablo Neruda is one of the greatest and most passionate poets
of all time. I am never disappointed by his imagery,depth and sensitivity re: any focus he may have. I feel a need to keep his
perspective and wisdom with me.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Two Stars
By Bila Artzi
not the poems I did expect...

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^ Ebook Free Amexica: War Along the Borderline, by Ed Vulliamy

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Amexica is the harrowing story of the extraordinary terror unfolding along the U.S.-Mexico border—“a country in its own right, which belongs to both the United States and Mexico, yet neither”—as the narco-war escalates to a fever pitch there.

In 2009, after reporting from the border for many years, Ed Vulliamy traveled the frontier from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico, from Tijuana to Matamoros, a journey through a kaleidoscopic landscape of corruption and all-out civil war, but also of beauty and joy and resilience. He describes in revelatory detail how the narco gangs work; the smuggling of people, weapons, and drugs back and forth across the border; middle-class flight from Mexico and an American celebrity culture that is feeding the violence; the interrelated economies of drugs and the maquiladora factories; the ruthless, systematic murder of young women in Ciudad Juarez. Heroes, villains, and victims—the brave and rogue police, priests, women, and journalists fighting the violence; the gangs and their freelance killers; the dead and the devastated—all come to life in this singular book.

Amexica takes us far beyond today’s headlines. It is a street-level portrait, by turns horrific and sublime, of a place and people in a time of war as much as of the war itself.

• Sales Rank: #1817468 in Books
• Published on: 2010-10-26
• Released on: 2010-10-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.44" h x 1.34" w x 6.27" l, 1.35 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This engrossing travelogue traces the fraught Mexican-American border, where the collision of affluence and poverty is mediated by an ultraviolent narco-traficante culture. Vulliamy (Seasons in Hell) journeys from Tijuana, where the ruthless Arellano Félix Organization cartel battles rivals, to the Atlantic coast, where the even more ruthless Zetas cartel, armed with grenades and rocket launchers, battles the Mexican army and besieges whole cities. In the middle is Juárez, the world's most violent town, an anarchy of contending cartels, street gangs, and their police and military allies, where massacres, beheadings, and grisly sex murders are routine. Vulliamy's border isn't all drugs and killings; it's also narco-corrida songs that celebrate drugs and killings, the American gun industry that feeds off drug money and enables the killings, and a presiding quasi-Catholic cult of Santíssima Muerte (holiest death). The author's take isn't entirely coherent. Sometimes the border is the problem, an artificial rupture that provokes turf battles over prime smuggling sites; sometimes, presented less persuasively, the lawless border is just a symptom of global capitalism, like the desperate illegal immigrants and exploited maquiladora workers (in foreign-owned low-wage factories along the border) he profiles. Although not especially deep, Vulliamy's is a vivid, disturbing dispatch from a very wild frontier.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Journalist Vulliamy has long reported on life along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, writing about international trucking, sweatshop factories, and illegal immigration. In this compelling book, he brings together the economic and cultural factors that have led to escalating violence along the border in territory that seems not to be under the control of either government. Traveling the frontier from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico, he interviewed drug dealers, law enforcers, and ordinary citizens caught in the gory violence and material excess surrounding narco-trafficking. Glorified in narcocorrido music and American film, drug traffickers are now involved in smuggling illegal immigrants, charging taxes to coyotes and ransom to families of immigrants kidnapped once they cross the border. He chronicles startling violence from a “soupmaker” who dissolves dead bodies in lye and acid to young traffickers who worship a culture of death that combines Catholicism and pre-Columbian faiths. Vulliamy examines the tough Arizona anti-immigration law and other immigration policies that are only now beginning to recognize that narco-trafficking can no longer be seen as the problem and responsibility of Mexico alone. --Vanessa Bush

Review
Praise for Amexica

“The author writes lyrically, with the enticing rhythm of his sentences contrasting jarringly with the degradation of humanity found on nearly every page . . . Most of the narrative feels fresh because it is based so heavily on Vulliamy’s own wanderings . . . An impressively rendered, nightmare-inducing account.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Previously, to understand the ruthlessness, ambition and impact of today’s global criminals, you needed to read Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah and Misha Glenny’s McMafia. Now, you also need to read Vulliamy’s Amexica.”—Brian Schofield, The Times UK

 

Most helpful customer reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
A fascinating, and much needed, perspective
By Sylvia Longmire
I'm a professional consultant, freelance writer, and author on Mexico's drug war, so I've read a LOT of books about this subject. These range from more scholarly works by academics like Dr George Grayson, to journalistic tomes by Charles Bowden and Malcolm Beith. I have to say, this has been my favorite book so far, if only because it makes the drug war seem so real and personal.

To give you an idea of how the book is set up, Vulliamy starts at the western end of the border in the Tijuana/San Diego area, and works his way east. During his journey, he meets and interviews people on both sides of the border to get their perspectives on the impact the drug war has had on their lives, and what the region known as "Amexica" means to them. He talks to American law enforcement, Mexican drug addicts and priests, businessmen and the unemployed...you name it. His chapter on Ciudad Juárez does an amazing job of capturing the chaos and hopelessness of the city - how no one knows anymore who's doing the killing, the rise in local drug addiction, the shockingly severe shortage of schools, the daily abandonment of children by parents who work in the maquiladoras, and the few souls who still hold out some hope.

The author's journey doesn't have a formal structure, but that's one of the things I liked about it. He does arrange his stories as he travels from west to east, but the stories themselves are so incredibly engrossing that you just can't wait to see who he meets next, and what his or her story is going to be. It's at times eye-opening, funny, sad, shocking, and heart-wrenching. If you're looking for a source for an academic research piece, this isn't it. However, if you want to learn more about the drug war from the personal perspectives of people on the ground on both sides of the border and from all walks of life, this book is for you.

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
What it offers trumped by what it lacks
By T Campbell
Picking up Amexica: War Along the Borderline by journalist Ed Vulliamy, I was initially excited, thinking here might be an accessible book by a veteran journalist capable of explaining to the English-speaking public just what is going on in Mexico and why. Naïve, I know. My suspicions were raised as early as the second paragraph when the author mistranslated the extremely common Spanish-language sign-off Atte: as Look out. Atte: is actually an abbreviation of Atentamente, simply meaning Sincerely. Get something that basic that wrong that early in the book, and I knew I was in for a ride - downhill.

In short, Amexica is part travelogue, part sympathetic recounting of the devastation of the militarization of the war on drugs, and part "look at what daring stuff this white guy did." Vulliamy gets some things right - pointing out the fact that the drug trade is just another form of transnational capitalism; examining the U.S. role in arming the cartels and laundering their money; describing the toll neoliberalism has taken on Mexico in terms of migration and maquiladoras; and putting names and faces on some the 35,000+ dead in Felipe Calderón's disastrous so-called fight against organized crime. The main problem is that all of this is carried out superficially and with a lack of historical context and political analysis, along with omissions and errors. As such, if you want to know how things are right now in the borderlands, reading this book might be somewhat useful. If you want to know why things are they way they are right now, this book will not help you.

In glossing over the past to get to the juicy, bloody present, Vulliamy does his readers a disservice. There is no discussion of how the war on drugs as a concept emerged in the Nixon-era and developed as a strategy of population containment and oppression, a politically expedient and enormously profitable endeavor that since 2001 has coalesced well with the rhetoric of the war on terror and Bush and Obama's war on migrants. The end of 70 years of PRI rule in Mexico on the federal level, dismantling the pre-existing arrangements with the drug cartels just as they were getting more powerful due to the collapse of the Colombian cartels, goes nearly unexamined. Similarly ignored is the role that Calderón's legitimacy played in the launching of a military offensive inside of Mexico. As he fraudulently arrived at the presidency, the drug war was a means of instilling his regime with legitimacy. Scant attention is paid to the Mérida Initiative, the U.S.'s billion dollar military aid package to Mexico, nor to how the same police and military forces receiving the aid and executing the "drug war" are also involved in large scale human rights violations, massive corruption, and the severe repression of Mexico's social movements - all with impunity. Linking these factors to the current events that this book covers is essential for any understanding of the situation.

Adding to the contextual shortcomings of the book are the various errors and poor translations. It's stunning his editors either in the U.K. or U.S. did not hire a translator to verify his Spanish - or at least open a Spanish-English dictionary. Some of the more humorous examples: He translates gabacho as someone from Europe and gringo as someone from the U.S. (Both mean someone from the U.S., Vulliamy would simply be a güero); and translating fresa - in reference to someone who dresses or acts bourgeois - literally as strawberry. Regarding the facts, some examples of errors: The claim that Carlos Salinas privatized communally-held land in the 1980s. (He only arrived at the presidency in December of 1988, privatization did not begin until after the 1992 reform of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution in preparation for NAFTA.) Vulliamy's statement that the Arrellano Félix Organization intentionally killed Cardinal Posadas Ocampo in 1993 in order to target the Catholic Church. (Initial investigations showed they confused Posadas' convoy with that of a rival cartel leader. More recent investigations indicate the assassination was likely state-sponsored.) Or also his writing that "the only investigation of its kind" into Los Zetas penetration into Monterrey was carried out by a Los Angeles Times reporter, ignoring those done by Mexican journalists or Kristin Bricker for Narco News.

In sum, Vulliamy's book leaves much to be desired and that which is present should be cautiously digested. Even if it took a bit longer to put out, a more thoroughly-considered and better edited version of this book would have made a much more useful contribution to this politically-manufactured crisis facing Mexico and increasingly the U.S.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Globalization
By Professor Joseph L. McCauley
I learned a lot from this discussion of recent violent events along the border from Calif. to Tx. The author presents drug running, the murders of women in Juarez, and illegal entry in the context of globalization, provokes thoughts. Massive immigration to the border was spurred by the Maquiladoras there. Globalization based on cheap labor.

My wife gave me the book for Christmas. I read it on our odyssey along and south of I-10 from Houston to Ajo, Az. during the school break. We talked with a border agent in El Paso at the rr tracks, with people in se Az. where a rancher was recently killed, with a park ranger at Apache Pass, and with a Tonho O'odham Indian in sw Az. on the Devil's Highway. All the while reading the book. Certainly, from the Indian standpoint the border makes no sense. We'd slept in van Horn before El Paso del Norte. The border agent (who removed his name badge for a photo) told us that Tommy Lee Jones ha a ranch near van Horn and doesn't like the border patrol. He recommended Jones' film 'The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada', and 'Bordertown', and said that the border is far worse than is depicted in (book, movie) 'No Country for Old Men'. I recommend all of those, plus a good, slow drive along and south of I-10 from Texas through Azizona. The wild, untamed landscape will grow on you, and you will begin to glimpse the vastly diverse viewpoints of the different people who populate that wild, sparse, mountainous and desert region.

Don't avoid the drive through the O'odham reservation from Ajo to Sells, where the signs in the modern, well-stocked supermarket in Sells are in the Indian language. At Apache Pass there was sympathy on the part of the park rangers for the Apache. They told us that Cochise used to come down and play cards with the U.S. Cavalry before he was framed. In the O'odham nation, the Apache are not heroes. The region is complex and dangerous on the American side of 'the border'.

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