The New York Review Abroad

February 4, 2013
The 27 essays in this collection illustrate just how much misfortune can be packed into 50 years: reporters go where the conflicts are, and the portrait they paint of the world is bleak. The book moves freely from country to country, crisis to crisis, and only chronology dictates the transition from gravediggers on strike in Liverpool to the mental health system of India. But more than a quarter of the book was written after 9/11, and with the exception of the very last essay (on Haiti), the focus of that portion narrows abruptly to current events in the Middle East. These recent essays offer patterns that illuminate history. For example, the self-delusion of “springy, zesty, burning-eyed warriors” rebuilding Vietnam in 1967 echoes America’s sloppy rush to “install democracy” in Iraq 40-odd years later. These skilled essayists offer vivid descriptions that can sometimes be hard to stomach—but if we don’t see the cycles of history play out from one decade to the next, we may be doomed to repeat them.

June 15, 2013

The New York Review of Books (NYRB) is 50 years old this year. Silvers, its cofounder and editor, has selected 27 essays by journalists and literary lights, published in the NYRB over that time. Characteristically, the pieces are intellectually rich and thought-provoking, if long, sometimes dense, and occasionally turgid. Mary McCarthy leads off with her 1963 "Report from Vietnam" in which she foreshadows the failure of American policymakers to understand the war they were fighting. The final piece is Nicolas Pelham's "Is Libya Cracking Up?" (2012). Stephen Spender (on the 1968 Paris riots), V.S. Naipaul (on 1972 Argentina), and Joan Didion (on 1982 El Salvador) provide other highlights. The essays recount injustice, genocide, revolution, suicide bombers--indeed, almost any turmoil of humankind around the globe. Ian Buruma (human rights & journalism, Bard Coll.) provides brief introductions to each piece, and many have epilogs by the writers themselves. VERDICT A difficult, often cheerless, but always perceptive collection that provides a strong context (and contrast) to the more traditional historiography. The most likely readers, however, will be historians and social philosophers, who may well already have access to the pieces through their NYRB subscriptions.--Edwin Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS

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