Hungarian Writer László Krasznahorkai Wins The Nobel Prize In literature

Hungary’s Laszlo Krasznahorkai poses for photographers in London, Tuesday, May 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

BY KOSTYA MANENKOV, JILL LAWLESS AND MIKE CORDER

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose philosophical, bleakly funny novels often unfold in single sentences, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

The Nobel judges praised his “artistic gaze which is entirely free of illusion, and which sees through the fragility of the social order combined with his unwavering belief in the power of art,” Steve Sem-Sandberg of the Nobel committee said at the announcement.

“László Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through (Franz) Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess,” the Nobel judges said.

The work that won the Nobel Prize in literature

Zsuzsanna Varga, a Hungarian literature expert at the University of Glasgow, said Krasznahorkai’s apocalyptic and surreal novels probe the “utter hopelessness of the condition of human existence,” while also managing to be “incredibly funny.”

Varga said Krasznahorkai’s near-endless sentences made his books the “Hotel California” of literature – once readers get into it, “you can never leave.”

Other books include “The Melancholy of Resistance,” a surreal, disturbing tale set in a small Hungarian town, and “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” the sprawling saga of a gambling-addicted aristocrat.

Several works, including his debut, “Satantango,” and “The Melancholy of Resistance” were turned into films by Hungarian director Béla Tarr.

Varga suggested readers new to Krasznahorkai’s work start with “Satantango,” his debut, which set the tone for what was to follow.

“Satan who is dancing a tango — I mean, how surreal can you be?” she said.

Krasznahorkai has also written several books inspired by his travels to China and Japan, including “A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East,” published in Hungarian in 2003.

How Krasznahorkai came to win

Sem-Sandberg said that Krasznahorkai had been on the Nobel radar for some time, “and he has been writing and creating one outstanding work after another.” He called his literary output “almost half a century of pure excellence.”

Krasznahorkai, 71, couldn’t immediately be reached for his reaction. He didn’t speak at the announcement.

He was born in the southeastern Hungarian city of Gyula, near the border with Romania, and has since traveled the world. Throughout the 1970s, he studied law at universities in Szeged and Budapest before shifting his focus to literature.

Krasznahorkai has been a vocal critic of autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, especially his government’s lack of support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

But in a post on Facebook, Orbán was quick to congratulate the writer, saying: “The pride of Hungary, the first Nobel Prize winner from Gyula, László Krasznahorkai. Congratulations!”

In an interview with Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet earlier this year, Krasznahorkai expressed criticism both of Orbán’s political system and the nationalism present in Hungarian society.

“There is no hope left in Hungary today and it is not only because of the Orbán regime,” he told the paper. “The problem is not only political, but also social.”

He also reflected on the fact that he has long been a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, saying: “I don’t want to lie. It would be very interesting to get that prize. But I would be very surprised if I got it.”

Previous awards for Krasznahorkai and the other Nobels this year

Krasznahorkai has received many earlier awards, including the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. The Booker judges praised his “extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths, their tone switching from solemn to madcap to quizzical to desolate as they go their wayward way.”

He also won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the U.S. in 2019 for “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming.”

The American writer and critic Susan Sontag once described Krasznahorkai as the “contemporary master of the Apocalypse.” He was also friends with American poet and writer Allen Ginsberg and would regularly stay in Ginsberg’s apartment while visiting New York City.

He’s the first winner from Hungary since Imre Kertesz in 2002. He joins an illustrious list of laureates that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro.

The literature prize has been awarded by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy 117 times to a total of 121 winners. Last year’s prize was won by South Korean author Han Kang for her body of work that the committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

The literature prize is the fourth to be announced this week, following the 2025 Nobels in medicine, physics and chemistry.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday. The final Nobel, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, will be announced on Monday.

Nobel Prize award ceremonies are held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes.

Each prize carries an award of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million), and the winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma.

Mike Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands, and Jill Lawless from London. Justin Spike contributed to this report from Budapest, Hungary.

Book Review: “The Trouble Of Color: An American Family Memoir” & “Last Seen: The Enduring Search By Formerly Enslaved People To Find Their Lost Families”

BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

Who do you think you are?

That’s a question that can be taken in multiple ways. It’s in-your-face, aggressive, angry. Or it’s inquisitive and open, asking for introspection. Where did your family come from? And who do you think you are? Or, as in these books, is that question to be answered?

For author Martha S. Jones, issues of identity were already understood; she’d grown up knowing that there were Black ancestors in her lineage, full-stop. She never thought it was anything but obvious – until a college classmate questioned Jones’ heritage.

In her book, “The Trouble of Color” (Basic Books, $30), Jones writes of untangling her truth. Color obviously mattered differently to Jones’ three-times-great grandmother than it did for her parents. Color didn’t draw a smooth line through history, it didn’t stay in one place or even in one century. The story of living as someone of color weaved all along Jones’ family tree, often revealing nuggets of pride, strength, and of surprise.

There’s a journey inside this book that begs readers to go along – and you’ll be glad you did. It takes you from city to country to find Jones’ ancestors, and it’s both comfortingly familiar and quite astounding. If you’ve ever delved into your own heritage, had your DNA tested, or looked into your ancestry and discovered unexpected things, this is a book to read.

If you’ve done those things, then you know the delight you feel when you found someone who was lost – and you’ll understand the heavy sadness and urgency inside the stories in “Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families” by Judith Giesberg (Simon & Schuster, $29.99).

One of the most heinous practices of slave-owners in America was the separating of families. Children could, and were, sold away from their parents. Siblings were divided. Husbands and wives were sold apart, with no idea if or when they might see one another again. After Emancipation, it was common to see advertisements in newspapers, classified ads, editorials and posters in search of missing loved ones and separated relatives.

In this heart-wrenching, sometimes happy, always powerful book, Geisberg profiles a tiny handful of those stories. Once he found them, for instance, Tally Miller changed his surname so that no one could ever take his family away from him again. Hagar Outlaw struggled to find as many of her nine children as she could, once she was freed. Time never stopped husbands from looking for their wives (or the other way around), or siblings from finding each other.

This book explodes the imagination, and it’ll make you glad for the research methods we have at our disposal today. Readers who’ve hit a dead-end on their own genealogical searches will want to read this important slice of devastating American history.

Of course, these books will make you want more, and you’ll get it by heading for your favorite bookstore or library. There, you’ll find what you need, and who maybe you think you are.

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Beatlemania: A Penetrating New Book Celebrates Lennon And McCartney

BY T BONE BURNETTE

JOHN AND PAUL: A LOVE STORY IN SONGS

IAN LESLIE, CELADON

433PP

The Beatles at the press launch for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” held at the home of their manager Brian Epstein.Credit...John Downing/Getty Images

In our culture, music is most often written about in terms of sales, streams and chart positions. That is, of course, the least intelligent way to think about or talk about music.

Ian Leslie’s “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs” is unconcerned with all that, but rather it explores the way two extraordinarily gifted young men combined and exchanged their gifts while inspiring, challenging, teaching and learning from each other.

In the great teams of composers before John Lennon and Paul McCartney — Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Loewe, Leiber and Stoller, Bacharach and David — one of the members wrote the music and the other wrote the lyrics. John and Paul both wrote music and both wrote lyrics, and they made a decision at the beginning of their collaboration to share the credit on all of their compositions, thereby creating a third being called Lennon and McCartney. That selfless, generous merger, as their egos shape-shifted into and out of each other, unleashed a power that took music to a height that has not since been surpassed, or I think it safe to say, even reached.

I fell in love with rock ’n’ roll music when I was 9 years old in 1957 and first heard “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” by Jerry Lee Lewis. I clearly remember rolling around on the floor laughing at the explosion of freedom and joy in that recording, and in that moment I thought that that was how I wanted to spend my life. By 1960, however, the rock ’n’ roll explosion had faded away. Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash. Elvis Presley was in the Army. Chuck Berry was in jail. Eddie Cochran died in a car wreck. Little Richard was in the ministry. Jerry Lee Lewis had been canceled. Rock ’n’ roll seemed at a dead end.

Three years later, however, these two young musicians and their friends George Harrison and Ringo Starr, all from a seaport in the north of England, reinvented a style of music that had come from the backwaters of the Mississippi Delta, the highlands of the Appalachian Mountains and the mean streets of our cities. In the next five years, while absorbing and combining the art and music of the rest of the 20th century, they made music that took us all on an exquisite trip into other worlds of sound and meaning in a feat of invention that seems and is, I think, superhuman.

Though there has probably never been music that has permeated and elevated mass culture to a higher degree, this book is not interested in music as a mass commodity. This book is about soul, about grief and most of all about love — the love that two boys who lost their mothers far too soon have for each other, the courageous way they merge and the unfathomable power of that merger.

Leslie, a British journalist and author, has a deep affection for, and a penetrating understanding of, these complex characters and their unprecedented friendship — from their boyhoods in Liverpool, through the debauchery of postwar-Hamburg night life, through their lightning rise to international fame, through the remarkable string of albums with the explosive innocence of “With the Beatles” in 1963, the jubilant rockabilly of “Beatles for Sale” in 1964, the cannabis-fueled “Rubber Soul” in 1965, the epic psychedelia of “Revolver” in 1966 and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in 1967 — which, perhaps inevitably, ended in acrimony not long thereafter. Having lived through that period of time myself, it is stunning to follow Leslie’s insights into how far and fast John and Paul traveled, how profound their preternatural alliance was, and how epic their heroic journey.

I’m sorry John isn’t here to read this book. I hope if Paul does read it he feels the depth of appreciation and gratitude and intelligence it contains. There is a passage about them being high on LSD, after recording the song “Getting Better” during the “Sgt. Pepper’s” sessions, that seems to me central to Leslie’s understanding of his subjects:


That night, John and Paul did something that the two of them practiced quite a few times during this period: They gazed intensely into each other’s eyes. They liked to put their faces close together and stare, unblinking, until they felt themselves dissolving into each other, almost obliterating any sense of themselves as distinct individuals. “There’s something disturbing about it,” recalled McCartney, much later, in his understated way. “You ask yourself, ‘How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t.”

One plus one equals two unless you are counting, say, drops of water, in which case one plus one can equal one, or it can equal a fine mist. In “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,” one plus one equals eternity.

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Democracy For Sale: Trump, Musk, And The Rise Of The New Oligarchy

BY DEBASHIS CHAKRABARTI

In the twilight of American democracy, a battle is brewing—not just against Donald Trump’s executive overreach, but against the creeping oligarchy embodied by Trump and his billionaire enablers, chief among them Elon Musk. The question haunting progressives is not just whether Democrats can resist, but whether they have the will to fight.

Trump’s latest executive orders—gutting federal education funding, rolling back environmental protections, and dismantling worker protections—are not aberrations but the natural culmination of a system increasingly designed to serve the ultra-rich. Musk’s shadow looms large, as he consolidates influence over critical infrastructure, social media, and even space exploration. Together, Trump and Musk are architects of a new, more insidious form of corporate authoritarianism, one where political power is wielded not only from the White House but from the boardrooms of tech monopolies.

The Fragility of Trump’s Economic War

Trump presents himself as the ultimate economic warrior, fighting China, reshoring American jobs, and punishing corporations that fail to comply with his nationalist agenda. But beneath this rhetoric lies an economic policy built on contradictions and fragility. His sweeping tariffs and trade wars have left American consumers burdened with rising costs, while the deregulation spree has benefited the wealthy at the expense of working-class voters.

Trump’s so-called economic populism is, in practice, a Trojan horse for oligarchic control. Musk, a direct beneficiary of tax breaks and deregulation, has capitalized on these policies while touting his own brand of libertarian techno-optimism. Meanwhile, corporate tax cuts have accelerated wealth concentration, making billionaires even more powerful in shaping economic policy. If history is any guide, this is a formula not for long-term economic strength but for increased volatility and widening inequality.

The War on Immigrants: A Political Distraction

As Trump prepares for another election cycle, his administration’s renewed war on immigrants serves as a convenient distraction from economic mismanagement. His aggressive deportation policies, family separation tactics, and draconian border measures do little to address real immigration challenges but succeed in stoking nationalist fervour.

The moral and economic consequences are profound. The labor market, dependent on immigrant labor, suffers under Trump’s restrictive measures. Industries from agriculture to healthcare struggle with workforce shortages, while asylum seekers—many fleeing crises worsened by U.S. foreign policy—are turned into scapegoats for broader societal problems. This xenophobic agenda is not about security or economic policy; it is about consolidating power through fear.

Trump’s Assault on American Colleges: A War on Knowledge

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Trump’s autocratic vision is his recent war on higher education. His administration’s efforts to defund institutions, eliminate diversity initiatives, and crack down on academic freedom reflect a broader attack on critical thinking itself.

The Republican strategy of branding universities as elitist indoctrination centers is more than just culture war rhetoric—it is an authoritarian playbook designed to weaken institutions that produce independent thought. Musk, too, has joined this crusade, using his influence over social media to amplify attacks on academia, labelling it as an enemy of innovation and free enterprise.

By targeting universities, Trump and his allies seek to dismantle one of the last bastions of democratic resistance. History shows that authoritarian regimes first target intellectuals, artists, and educators, silencing dissent before tightening their grip on power. The defunding of public education and the erosion of tenure protections are not isolated policies; they are part of a broader effort to render the public more susceptible to oligarchic rule.

Can the Democrats Fight Back?

Yet the Democratic response has been timid. Party leaders offer carefully worded condemnations, but their actions betray a paralysis rooted in institutional inertia. As progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders rally the base with their ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour, the fundamental question remains: will the Democratic Party be an instrument of resistance, or merely an accessory to the slow-motion collapse of democratic norms?

The anger is palpable at their rallies. The chants of “Primary Chuck!” signal a growing frustration with leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose conciliatory approach to Trump’s funding proposals has left many disillusioned. The Democratic establishment, ever cautious, argues for pragmatism, but pragmatism has too often been a euphemism for surrender.

The Historical Stakes

The stakes could not be higher. Trump and Musk’s vision for America is not merely conservative; it is plutocratic. It is an America where policy is dictated by the wealthiest few, where labor unions are dismantled, where dissenting voices are silenced through algorithmic suppression, and where public institutions serve private interests. It is a future in which democracy itself is a relic.

History warns us of what happens when democracies fail to check rising autocracy. The Weimar Republic’s dithering in the face of right-wing populism did not prevent Hitler’s rise; rather, it enabled it. The Democratic Party now faces a choice: to stand as a bulwark against the corrosion of democratic institutions or to be remembered as a party that watched from the sidelines as the oligarchs seized control.

Some within the party recognize this urgency. Ocasio-Cortez’s refusal to rule out a primary challenge against Schumer signals a growing willingness to push back against institutional complacency. Sanders’ direct appeal to working-class voters—particularly in battleground states—reflects an understanding that true resistance requires mass mobilization. Yet resistance cannot be shouldered by a few progressive outliers alone. It must be institutionalized, backed by legislative force and a party apparatus willing to wield power as ruthlessly as those seeking to dismantle democracy.

The Democratic Party’s Final Test

Democrats have been here before. The New Deal was not born from polite negotiations; it was wrenched into existence by a party willing to defy the wealthy elite. The Civil Rights Act did not pass through half-measures; it passed because leaders understood that history does not remember those who hedge their bets—it remembers those who fight.

The coming months will reveal whether the Democratic Party has absorbed these lessons or whether it remains trapped in its cycle of performative opposition. But if it fails—if it continues to cower in the face of billionaire power and executive authoritarianism—then it will not be Trump or Musk alone who erode American democracy. It will be the Democratic Party itself, through its failure to act, that writes its obituary.

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Book Review: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Latest Novel Marks A Vibrant Return

BY HELEN WIEFFERING

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Dream Count” feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author’s first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction.

At its face, “Dream Count” is about the emotional lives of four women living between Nigeria and Washington, D.C., each grappling with a search for purpose, stability and love. Deep into its pages, the book turns to darker questions of justice and exploitation when one character’s life is irrevocably changed.

The novel begins with the perspective of Chiamaka, or Chia, a Nigerian-born woman who has spent her adulthood and career in America. Living alone amid lockdown in the pandemic, she begins to reflect on a cast of former romances — each one part of her “dream count,” a loose tally she keeps of her efforts to find a complete, all-knowing love. Her voice and memories connect the many threads of “Dream Count” that follow.

In turns, the book shifts its focus to three other women and their dreams. There is Chia’s friend Zikora, an ambitious lawyer who is desperate to be a mother, and Chia’s brazen cousin Omelogor, a banker in Nigeria who has a crisis of confidence upon coming to America.

The novel starts to crackle with urgency and outrage when we meet Kadiatou, Chia’s cook and housekeeper who also works as a maid in an upscale hotel. Far from the Guinean village of her youth, Kadiatou has finally found steady work and contentment in America when she is suddenly, horrifically assaulted by one of the hotel’s prominent guests.

Adichie renders the moment of her assault in quick, shuddering details. Though Kadiatou is surprised to find her bosses believe her account, she soon learns that the rest of the world wants a say, as well. Reporters and photographers stake out her apartment within hours of the assault. Her body and life history are dissected as evidence in the lead-up to an international trial.

Kadiatou’s tale isn’t born completely of imagination. Nearly 15 years ago, a New York hotel housekeeper named Nafissatou Diallo came forward to accuse the then-leader of the International Monetary Fund of sexually assaulting her when she arrived to clean his room. Adichie explains in the novel’s endnote how she was hooked and gutted by Diallo’s testimony. “Dream Count” is Adichie’s way, she writes, of dignifying her story. “Imaginative retellings matter,” she says. “Literature keeps the faith and tells the story as reminder, as witness, as testament.”

The novel’s undercurrent of politics hums louder in the aftermath of those scenes. This is, after all, a book by the same author of “We Should All Be Feminists.” We see Chia’s dream career as a travel writer hampered by American editors who would rather publish outdated stereotypes of Africans. The saucy, sharp Omelogor is willing to play in the corrupt games of powerful men to build her wealth, but feels ridiculed and dismissed in America for that same spirit.

One could question what purpose it serves for the novel to include Kadiatou’s wrenching survival story alongside the tales of well-to-do women. Though Chia and her friends root for and support Kadiatou, they’re ultimately embroiled in their own growing pains. At points, the novel’s sense of time speeds up too quickly or fails to fully develop a thread. (The character Zikora, especially, fades away from later parts of the book.)

But none of these weak points ever risks dampening the novel’s vibrant energy. “Dream Count” succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie’s voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we’re separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Fleetwood Mac All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Track – Book Review

BY CLAIRE GLOVER

Fleetwood Mac – All The Songs – delves deeply into the exceptional recording history of the hugely-bestselling and immensely influential rock band. Packed with captivating information, photographs and fascinating behind-the-scenes details, it’s a must-have for any music fan.

This is an extremely comprehensive, beautiful book that covers Fleetwood Mac’s 15 lineups. It captures details of Peter Green, including his tragic death, the blues origins of Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie, and the crowning glory when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the line-up.

Detailing the band’s many iterations, from the self-titled debut album in 1968 when they were known as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, to the classic Rumours era. Covering the shocking passing of Christine McVeigh in November 2022, it’s crammed with hundreds of brilliant photographs, including rare black and white stills and images of instruments used by the band and engaging shots of the musicians in the recording studio. It is an essential prized possession for any true fan of classic rock. It’s a complete look at behind the scenes, which chronicles a five-decade-long recording history of this well-loved, bestselling and hugely influential rock band.

The content draws upon years of research to recount the circumstances that led to the composition of every song the band ever wrote, as well as the details behind their studio recording process. The layout comprehensively covers all the songs, documenting the musicians, where the song was recorded, production details, genesis and lyrics. Alongside incredible images capturing the band across the years.

From documenting Fleetwood Mac’s first concert at the Windsor National and Jazz and Blues Festival in 1967. From 1975 – 1987, which was then the Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks line up. It tells of Mick Fleetwood remembering hearing the song Frozen Love, performed by the Buckingham / Nicks duo, and he was particularly taken by the guitarist’s touch. He invited Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac, who insisted that his girlfriend Stevie Nicks be part of the adventure, and the rest is history, beautifully captured in these pages.

A couple of little snippets of mesmerising information: Lindsey Buckingham, who was born in October 1949, was pushed into swimming by his father, the owner of a prosperous coffee factory. Yet his only interest seemed to be music, and he didn’t fit in with his two older brothers, who were nicknamed the swimming Buckingham’s. At the age of five, Buckingham spent most of his time drawing guitars while his two brothers were swimming laps in the community pool. His obsession with the self-taught guitar took precedence over everything else.

Stephanie Lynn Nicks was born on May 26, 1948, in Phoenix, Arizona. The name Stevie came from the fact she couldn’t pronounce the word Stephanie when she was little, and so the pronunciation came out as TD, which was eventually turned into Stevie. She was certainly one of the most emblematic figures in the band. Under the watchful eye of her grandfather, country singer Aaron Jess Nicks, Stevie first sang at the age of four. He introduced her to dozens of 45 records, which they listened to together religiously. He was tempted to take her on tour with him, but gave up when her parents categorically refused.

The 600 pages of the book’s contents include – The Roots of Fleetwood Mac, Jeremy Spencer, The Guitarist With Two Faces, The 2003 to 2013 Tours, Glossary, Photo Credits and final pages covering the band’s discography of every song.

This incredible book extensively captures in words and pictures one of the most enduring, charming yet drama-filled bands in rock history, whose success, challenges and amazing music continues to resonate with generations of listeners.

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Haunted By Apartheid, An American Confronts The Limits Of Revenge

BY VIOLET KUPERSMITH

Each of Lauren Francis-Sharma’s three novels begins with a calculated killing. In her 2014 debut, “’Til the Well Runs Dry,” a desperate Trinidadian girl catches and slaughters a wild opossum to feed her family. In 2020’s “Book of the Little Axe,” a band of Crow boys stalks and takes down a bighorn sheep on a hunting expedition. Now, in “Casualties of Truth,” Francis-Sharma’s tense, timely new novel about the monstrous legacy of South African apartheid, the killing in the opening pages is of a man. Like the opossum and the sheep, he is also being hunted for sustenance, albeit sustenance of a different, darker, figurative kind.

The deceased is a white policeman in 1996 Johannesburg. At the book’s outset, he is lamenting Mandela’s presidency and his own perceived loss of power under it, limping from injuries sustained during an unexplained altercation with an American girl. In the early hours of the following morning, his throat is slit by an unseen assailant. We later learn that the policeman’s execution was an act of revenge: an attempt to claim justice for other stolen lives, for stolen dignity, for the stolen agency of an entire traumatized country. But at what cost? This is the uneasy question at the center of the story: Can we ever really atone for violence without more violence? And can we survive what has been done to us without sacrificing our own humanity in the process?

From 1996 Johannesburg, the novel flashes forward to 2018 Washington, D.C., where Prudence Wright and her husband, Davis, are by all outward appearances very happily married. The Wrights are wealthy, successful and attractive, and they own an enormous home in Bethesda, Md. While Prudence contends that they are not a real Black Washington power couple, “at least not in the way Black Washingtonians knew Black Washington power couples to be,” she and Davis still turn heads when they enter a room together.

The Prudence we meet in 2018 is guarded, carefully composed, the kind of woman who has sharpened herself to a point out of self-preservation. After a tragedy-scarred childhood in Baltimore, she went on to earn three Ivy League degrees and a partnership at McKinsey before stepping back from her career to stay at home with her autistic son.

On the stormy D.C. night when Prudence’s story begins, she is accompanying Davis to meet his new colleague at what she assumes will be a tedious work dinner. But when the colleague arrives at the restaurant he turns out to be Matshediso, a South African man whose life collided with Prudence’s two decades earlier, when she spent a few months in Johannesburg for a law school internship. Matshediso knows secrets from Prudence’s past that still haunt her, and it is no coincidence that he has suddenly re-materialized as an I.T. guy at her husband’s law firm.

“Casualties of Truth” is a brutal history lesson in the guise of a thriller. The novel is taut and deftly plotted, volleying between 1996 and 2018 as it exposes Matshediso’s shared history with Prudence — and with the dead policeman — as well as what Matshediso wants with Prudence now.

There is a nightmarish quality to the story; moments of strange, almost surreal terror arise as abruptly as they vanish — a threatening man leaps onto the hood of a car without warning, a child goes missing in a restaurant, an idyllic morning at a farmers’ market devolves into trippy anguish. The potential for violence lurks beneath even the most innocuous surfaces, keeping Prudence (and the reader) perpetually on edge.

But the novel’s deeper aim is to shine a light on the human rights violations committed during the apartheid era. Amid the suspense, Francis-Sharma brings us into the courtrooms of South Africa’s 1996 Truth and Reconciliation hearings: “a system where citizens could lodge complaints and perpetrators could request pardons for the horrible things they had done,” and the new government’s way of “forging the most progressive democracy ever envisioned while also making amends for the past horrors for which they were largely not responsible.”

Prudence attends some of the proceedings as part of her internship, and the testimonies she witnesses are the most gripping passages in the entire book — bald descriptions of atrocities, made all the more appalling by the mundane delivery of the amnesty-seeking men who committed them.

“Casualties of Truth” is a tale of dual reckonings, of a woman and a country both forced to face their histories and the harrowing violence that has shaped them. Despite the pain chronicled in its pages, and despite having no easy answer to the complex question of what real accountability looks like, the book does contain a shred of hope: Though the truth alone is not justice, there is still freedom in it.

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The Archives Tried To Erase Her Family. She Tells Their Story.

In “The Trouble of Color,” Jones has done more than honor her family’s history; she reinscribes their story on the tablet of our collective imagination. Credit...via Martha S. Jones

BY KERRI K. GREENIDGE

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,

TUFFTS UNIVERSITY

THE TROUBLE OF COLOR:

AN AMERICAN FAMILY MEMOIR

BY MARTHA S. JONES

BASIC BOOKS; 314PP

When Martha S. Jones was a student at SUNY New Paltz, she took a course called “Black Sociology” with Prof. James Bowen. It was the mid-1970s, and the first Black studies department, founded at San Francisco State University at the height of 1960s student protests, was less than a decade old. As part of the first generation of African-descended young people to engage with Black culture and history in the college classroom, Jones was excited for all that Bowen’s class could offer. Despite her fair skin and “hair too limp” (her words), she relished the chance to become “sisters of the skin” with her classmates.

Rather than camaraderie, however, Jones experienced a humiliating confrontation while giving an oral presentation on Frantz Fanon’s book “A Dying Colonialism.” Looking back on the incident in her consummately readable, lyrically rendered new memoir, “The Trouble of Color,” Jones, an award-winning professor and gifted historian at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledges that her Blackness was not the same as Fanon’s. “Fanon came of age in colonized Martinique and then through military service and medical training,” she writes. “Instead, my self-discovery began in that cinder-block and linoleum upstate New York classroom.”

Anxious to please and struggling through her first attempt at public speaking, Jones gave a mechanical recitation of Fanon’s work, inciting protest from her classmates. One of the most vocal critics was Ron, a “suitably brilliant, handsome and outspokenly confident” student, who scoffed, “Enough of this. We shouldn’t have to listen to this. She doesn’t even know where the French Antilles are.”

Jones, the author of multiple, field-defining works of African American history, understands this painful moment as a consequence of adolescent racial gatekeeping, predicated on the other students’ assumptions about her Blackness. But as an 18-year-old, she attempted to deflect the accusation of racial inauthenticity by saying, “Well … the French Antilles are in France.”

She eventually befriended Ron but never forgot what he spat at her: “Who do you think you are?”

“The Trouble of Color” is an attempt to answer this question through a sophisticated analysis of race using Jones’s own family history as a prism, while implicitly arguing for the centrality of Black women scholars in the historical profession.

Jones’s paternal grandfather was David Dallas Jones (1887-1956), a North Carolina native, graduate of Wesleyan University and president of Bennett College, in Greensboro, N.C., now one of only two all-women H.B.C.U.s in the United States (Spelman College, in Atlanta, is the other). Jones knew him as “Grandy,” although he died before she was born.

The affectionate nickname belies David Jones’s significance. Under his presidency, Bennett, founded in 1873, became known as the “Vassar of the South,” a place where Black women, the children and grandchildren of enslaved people, obtained a rigorous liberal arts education in defiance of cultural expectations. Alumnae include Belinda Foster, North Carolina’s first Black woman district attorney; Carolyn Payton, the first Black woman head of the Peace Corps; and Gladys A. Robinson, a North Carolina state senator.

Martha Jones’s father, Paul M. Jones, along with his siblings and kin, grew up within the segregated yet racially proud world of Bennett College, and the stories she heard about ancestors, enslaved and free, who navigated the 20th-century color line shaped her subsequent scholarship.

“The Trouble of Color” is a pointed rebuttal to those who still insist that enslaved peoples’ histories are unknowable, or that Black people cannot be trusted as narrators of their own past. In a moving passage at the beginning of the book, Jones describes her frustration during the 1980s and ’90s when, reviewing literature in the nascent field of Black women’s history, she uncovered secondary sources that whitewashed her family’s past. One source mistook her grandfather for white, an inference presumably derived from photos depicting his light complexion.

Another source, a scholar of the civil rights movement, misspelled the name of Susie W. Jones, David Dallas Jones’s wife and Martha’s beloved grandmother Musie, whom he’d interviewed for his book — an error as grating for Jones as it is for many Black women who have routinely been misnamed or decredentialed, either deliberately or in ignorance.

As Martha Jones puts it, “I boiled with outrage, and one of Musie’s stories came immediately to mind: In the Jim Crow years, she’d battled local white people to be addressed by her preferred name — ‘Mrs. Jones’ — rather than the overly familiar ‘Susie’ or the demeaning ‘Gal.’ For people like my grandmother, what they were called mattered.”

Jones’s account of these errors is particularly poignant coming at a time when a respected scholar and the first Black woman president of Harvard University can be dismissed as an incompetent “diversity hire.” Black women’s history, Jones insists, is vital for those who want to honor the generations of Black people who paved the way for our current achievements.

Although she never says so explicitly, Jones’s compelling descriptions of reading the archives, accompanied by images from the archives themselves, make clear that she understands the central role Black women historians have played in disrupting an academy that, like much of the world, constantly demands that we prove ourselves.

At one point, Jones recounts a visit to Oxmoor Farm, in Louisville, Ky., in search of traces of her oldest known ancestor.

Here Jones is at her analytical best, as she relates her ancestor Nancy Bell Graves’s enslavement to Martha Fry Bell, the wife of a Danville, Ky., merchant. After a dogged search, Jones unearths records of Nancy and her husband, Edmund, in the papers of a white professor and enslaver, Ormond Beatty. She discovers that Nancy had at least two sisters, Tinah and Betty — their names listed in holdings at Centre College in Danville that, according to the confident local archivist, contained no traces of Jones’s family.

This find leads Jones to the Filson Historical Society in Louisville and then to Oxmoor Farm, where she is struck by the decadence of a house museum maintained on the grounds where her ancestors were possibly enslaved. Jones enters Oxmoor in a state of high emotion, but she is comforted by the words of the historian Nell Irvin Painter, who advises colleagues to “remember the blood on the page” — a mantra that Jones, in a heartbreaking scene, repeats to herself as she searches for evidence of Nancy’s kin at Oxmoor. The experience is a reminder, she writes, that “the documents I sometimes read, though neat and elegantly scripted, had their origins in brutal force.”

In “The Trouble of Color,” Jones has done more than honor her family’s history; she reinscribes their story on the tablet of our collective imagination. On Jan. 4, Thavolia Glymph, a historian at Duke University, delivered her final address as president of the American Historical Association. Like Jones, Glymph is a towering figure in her field, part of the cadre of Black women scholars who inform so much of Jones’s work. In her speech, Glymph, the first Black woman to head the A.H.A., argued against popular assumptions, both within and outside the academy, that the stories of America’s enslaved people can never be told, and that the archive, as we have traditionally understood it, cannot be relied upon to reveal the intricacies of Black life.

“The archive of slavery is not a black hole,” Glymph said. “The desires of slaveholders are not of such density and gravity that the voices of enslaved people cannot be heard. This is not the archive of the enslaved with which I work. The archive I have, and that we have, is one in which enslaved people speak, loudly, and act with intention.”

At a time when Black history is under attack, Glymph asks us to recognize that those histories we deny or deem unknowable are everywhere in the historical record — precisely what Jones’s beautiful memoir confirms.

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In ‘Citizen,’ Bill Clinton Gives His Side Of The Story

BY JONATHAN ALTER, WASHINGTON POST

“I couldn’t sleep for two years after the [2016] election. I was so angry, I wasn’t fit to be around,” Bill Clinton writes with rare self-awareness in his new memoir. “I apologize to all those who endured my outbursts of rage which lasted for years and bothered or bored people who thought it pointless to rehash things that couldn’t be changed.”

“Citizen” subordinates the rage to reason, and the rehash includes many ingredients that have been ignored or intentionally distorted by critics on both the left and right. We hear his side of the story on such topics as the controversial crime and welfare bills, the Wall Street deregulation of the 1990s and the Clinton Foundation, which has been dogged by questions. Although the book is full of humble and not-so-humble brags, the authentic Clinton comes through: smart, charming and — most of the time — convincing. This is the most unvarnished view we will probably get of a former president, now 78, who doesn’t care if you think he’s too wonky about his good deeds and too defensive when trying to set the record straight.

It’s not surprising that Clinton is still furious at former FBI director James B. Comey for insisting during the 2016 campaign that Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling her emails and for briefly announcing a new investigation of her just before the election. He makes a good case that the New York Times embarrassed itself by getting in bed with a right-wing muckraker (author Peter Schweizer) and grossly over-covering the emails story. Clinton argues persuasively that a combination of Comey, the Times and Russian meddling cost Hillary her six-point lead in late October and gave the world President Donald Trump.

But 2016 is only one of many things that still tick Clinton off. He’s annoyed that he was pressed on NBC News to apologize personally — instead of generally — to Monica Lewinsky (whose good works he praises); eager to confirm that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island and, contrary to rumors, never ditched his Secret Service detail or staff when traveling on Epstein’s plane in 2002 and 2003; and scathing about Republicans changing their tunes after hiding behind their desks on Jan. 6, 2021. “Trump asked them the question we’ve all heard in bad jokes,” he writes. “‘Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ Those who looked to Trump and said, ‘You, Master,’ lived to fight another day.”

But mostly the former president focuses on the positive. In his first interview after leaving office in 2001, he told me that he planned to use his “convening power” to make a better world. And he has. Even when he fails, he’s determined to “get caught trying,” his apt description of his postpresidential approach.

But where Jimmy Carter is lionized for his post-presidency, Clinton has been more often maligned. That’s partly because, unlike Carter, he has done well financially (thanks to paid speeches) while doing good, and partly because of debunked charges that the Clinton Global Initiative was just a cover for using Hillary’s position as the early 2008 front-runner and, later, as secretary of state to rake in cash. The messy distractions have obscured Clinton’s talent for forging partnerships that save and improve millions of lives.

This inspiring story began after a 2001 earthquake killed some 20,000 people in India, the first of several natural disasters that brought out the best in Clinton. He helped establish the American India Foundation, which built houses, schools and hospitals, created job training programs and became a template for his role as a kind of global coordinator in chief. After both the 2004 Christmastime tsunami in South Asia and, just months later, Hurricane Katrina in the United States, Clinton joined with former president George H.W. Bush in spearheading U.N. relief efforts. The two men, who had squared off in the 1992 election, formed an unusual bond.

In 2010, a huge earthquake killed some 200,000 people and destroyed much of Haiti, where the Clintons had gone on their honeymoon 35 years earlier. As president, Clinton almost invaded it. After the quake, still fascinated by the place, Clinton made 38 trips there. Despite corruption, cronyism and government incapacity there, he’s proud of what he and others accomplished: “Donald Trump was wrong; there are no ‘s__hole’ countries.” And Clinton hasn’t forgotten about the Trump campaign incorrectly claiming that he and Hillary were somehow involved in the suicide of a former Haitian government official.

Clinton’s discursive style reads in places like a warmhearted Wikipedia. But the brief digressions — on things such as the problems of the Puerto Rican electric utility system and the caloric content of beverage options in high school cafeterias — are usually welcome. Although we don’t get much irony — and never have with Clinton — it’s fun to hear how Stephen Colbert taught him to use social media, and sad to read that he cried for a half-hour after hearing of the death of Paul Farmer, the renowned humanitarian physician who helped build a hospital in Rwanda, where Clinton worked hard to atone for sitting on his hands during the genocide there when he was president.

Clinton’s greatest achievement since leaving the White House has been his successful effort to reduce the extremely high cost of antiretroviral AIDS medications, which eventually turned HIV from a death sentence into a chronic disease. Under the leadership of Clinton and Ira Magaziner, the Clinton Health Access Initiative worked with drug companies and some 125 countries to push the generic price of treatment down to 37 cents a day, setting the stage for foundations and government programs to begin pouring big money into saving millions of lives. Soon, the Clintons took what they learned and applied it to other health policy and environmental challenges.

Clinton didn’t invent the idea of requiring attendees at fancy nonprofit conferences to make specific commitments instead of just yakking. But, starting in 2005, he used that structure to help change global philanthropy. I remember being struck by how few reporters joined me in covering the Clinton Global Initiative, which takes place in New York every September. Some in the press were suspicious of conflicts of interest, particularly when Russian oligarchs began posing as philanthropists, an episode Clinton skips in the book. But CGI was more than on the level. Clinton reports that more than 3,600 commitments (on such things as water purification packets, micro-lending and clean cookstoves) improved the lives of roughly 500 million people in 180 countries.

Jonathan Alter is the author of “American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial—and My Own.”

Democracy In Decline At Home And Abroad

BY CHRISTINE CLARK

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS FOR

THE RAY SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT.

UC SAN DIEGO

A majority of Americans worry this year’s general election will be tainted by fraud, according to a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released earlier this month—an ominous indication of the state of democracy in the U.S.

“When citizens lose trust in the electoral process, they may question the legitimacy of elected officials and the institutions they represent, which undermines the foundational principle that government authority is derived from the will of the people,” said Lauren Prather, an associate professor of international relations at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. “And as we saw with the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S., people's beliefs about elections—whether it was free and fair, whether there was fraud, whether they trust the outcome—are incredibly important to peace and security, not just to democracy.”

The U.S. is not alone in showing signs of democratic backsliding. Threats to democracy are occurring all over the globe, and UC San Diego scholars, including Prather, are taking a deep dive into understanding the growing phenomena.

They are part of the Future of Democracy, an initiative of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) that is co-directed by Emilie Hafner-Burton, professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, and Christina Schneider, professor in the Department of Political Science at the UC San Diego School of Social Sciences.

The initiative brings together multiple disciplines and perspectives from across the University of California to better understand why illiberal regimes—governing systems that hide their nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures—are increasingly on the rise and what the consequences are for populations around the globe.

Democratic backsliding is now harder to see and counter

“In the past, the standard route from democracy to autocratic rule came through the military coup. Now, duly elected leaders are using executive offices to erode democracy from within,” said Stephan Haggard, distinguished research professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and research director for Democracy and Global Governance at IGCC. “Such actions—for example, against the judiciary or the integrity of the electoral system—are harder to see and counter.”

This phenomenon of “democratic backsliding” has occurred in a variety of governments—from Poland to Hungary, Brazil, Venezuela and the Philippines. And, as the events of Jan. 6 showed, even the U.S. is vulnerable.

Yet, illiberal rule has also gone global, influencing international organizations which were once a mainstay of international cooperation. The researchers have identified three trends they find particularly worrisome:

First: authoritarian great powers—China and Russia—are seeking to build coalitions in multilateral organizations that would challenge prevailing norms. Institutions like the UN’s Human Rights Council are particularly vulnerable.

Second: authoritarian leaders are using regional organizations to their advantage or even forming their own regional clubs, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union.

Finally: democratic regional organizations such as the European Union and Organization of American States now must contend with backsliding members—Poland and Hungary, Venezuela and Nicaragua—who openly flaunt democracy and rule-of-law norms.

The Future of Democracy, an initiative of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) that is co-directed by Emilie Hafner-Burton, professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, and Christina Schneider, professor in the Department of Political Science at the UC San Diego School of Social Sciences.

Autocracies often leverage international organizations to consolidate power

Several faculty from the Future of Democracy initiative have recently published studies in a special issue of the Review of International Organizations, one of the most prestigious academic journals in the field of international relations.

Four UC San Diego-affiliated authors developed a study featured in the journal that explores how illiberal regimes navigate international organizations and what the consequences are for international cooperation and domestic politics.

“Autocracies, backsliding democracies and illiberal political movements often leverage international organizations to protect themselves from internal and external challenges, including pressures to democratize,” said Hafner-Burton, coauthor of the study. “We find that participation in illiberal organizations reduces the prospects for political liberalization and democratization.”

In addition to Hafner-Burton, coauthors of the paper “Illiberal regimes and international organizations” include Christina Cottiero of the University of Utah, who is a UC San Diego alum from the Department of Political Science, as well as Haggard, Prather and Schneider.

Dictators and autocrats hide behind symbolic laws that promote “good governance”

A separate study from Hafner-Burton, Schneider and Jon Pevehouse of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows how autocratic regional organizations, such as the African Union (A.U.), adopt formal "good governance" mandates, such as human rights and anti-corruption policies, but that these measures are largely symbolic or are applied to non-members only.

“A particular irony of our study is that these mandates often arise from external pressure from democratic partners, such as the European Union, but end up having little effect,” said Schneider.

The study utilizes data from 48 primarily autocratic regional organizations between 1945-2015.

Fake or “zombie” election monitors help prop up autocracies

The concluding study in the Review of International Organization focuses on the rise of low-quality election monitors, often referred to as "zombie" election monitors. These “fake” election monitors have been shown to validate flawed elections and undermine credible election assessments, confusing voters and allowing authoritarian regimes to legitimize their rule.

The paper, authored by Prather, Cotteria and Sarah Sunn Bush of the University of Pennsylvania, includes recent data that reveals the presence of these questionable monitoring entities has surged, from 23% of elections observed by such groups in 2000, to a staggering 39% by 2020.

Their role in validating flawed elections is increasingly undermining high-quality monitors—international observers committed to upholding the principles of free and fair elections.

An example of this alarming trend occurred during the 2020 parliamentary election in Azerbaijan. While the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the election lacked genuine competition, low-quality monitors from the authoritarian regional organization, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that includes Russia, Belarus and other nation states in Eurasia, praised the election as "competitive and free," directly contradicting the OSCE's findings.

‘Democracy and its Discontents’

Recently, faculty from the Future of Democracy initiative discussed the challenges facing democracy in a miniseries of podcasts produced by IGCC. Listen to all episodes of “Democracy and its Discontents.” Topics include the allure of strongmen, the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric and how to move forward with hope.

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BOOK REVIEW: Zionists And Anti-Zionists: The 88 Year (And Growing) War

BY RABBI ALLEN S. MALLER

A recent book by Oren Kessler “Palestine 1936” treats the Palestinian side respectively, yet still receives a prestigious Jewish prize. The book is “Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict,” by the American-Israeli author Oren Kessler. His book relates in great detail how the Palestinian Arabs and the Israeli Zionists drifted into what would become an 88 year (so far) political and violent conflict. But did it have to be that way?

If the rulers of the Ottoman Empire had taken advantage of the Zionist leader Theodore Herzl’s offer of massive investments into the Ottoman Empire by European Jews like the Rothschild’s in return for expanded Jewish settlements in Palestine, the Ottomans would not have joined World War 1, and George Antonius’ book ‘The Arab Awakening’ would have been about the Christian, Jewish and Muslim nationalists in Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem verses the Turks.

If the Christian, Jewish and Muslim nationalists in Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem had to fight the Ottoman Turks for independence; there would have no British Mcahon-Hussein letters, nor any Balfour Declaration or British Mandate.

European and American Jewish Zionists would have supported the Arabs and Zionists against the Turks; and an independent Jewish Allied state might have become the outcome. Ali Maher Pasha, an Egyptian prime minister and chief adviser to King Farouk said, “in a better atmosphere they (the Zionists) might be able to advance further, not by force, but with Arab goodwill.” (Page 205)

But by 1939 Nationalistic secular politics had made even Arab governments rivals and Hajj Amin Husseini had already poisoned the possibility that Arabs could have offered their well respected traditional welcome of guests to their cousins who were desperate to return home.

The earlier Ben-Gurion’s meetings with George Antonius (pages 57-58) and Muse Alami (pages 38-42) would more likely have led to a more peaceful outcome for both sides. Millions of European Jews would not have died in the Nazi holocaust; and millions of Palestinians would not be living in refugee camps.

The book focuses on the period between 1936 and 1939, when several thousand Palestinians living under the British Mandate rose up violently against a growing Jewish population and the Brits who were in charge. Kessler cites estimates that about 500 Jews, 250 British servicemen and at least 5-8,000 Arabs died in the British crackdown, of whom at least 1,500 of the Palestinian Arabs likely died at the hands of fellow more extreme national Arabs (page 211).

In the wake of the violence, Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposed partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, while placing major limits on Jewish immigration. Most Zionists led by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, accepted the proposal.

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem and de facto leader of the Palestinian community, rejected the idea and called for jihad. He later went to Nazi Germany. The Palestinians emerged from the revolt weakened politically, economically and militarily. Since then more than 100-200,000 lives have been lost.

However, they did accomplish their goal of substantially slowing the growth of the Jewish populations. If the Palestinians had accepted Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposal partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, hundreds of thousands of European Jews could have been rescued and brought to the Jewish state in the years preceding the Nazi’s Final Solution.

And the failure of the revolt set the stage for what the Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe) when they lost the next anti-Zionist war in 1948.

The book came out on the eve of October 7, 2023 and inevitably offers fuel for the debates central to the protests and counter protests that followed the Hamas attack on Israel; and the Israelis’ subsequent war in Gaza. So are the Palestinian Arabs victims of a “settler colonial project,” or their own failed leadership? Can two people so at odds share the land, by dividing it? And might knowing this history bring both sides closer to a resolution?

Kessler said “I think my book and this chapter in history is full of ‘what if’ questions. The idea that things could have indeed gone differently and that we weren’t fated for endless conflict suggests maybe they still can go differently in the future.”

What if, he asks, Herbert Samuel, the British high commissioner for Palestine, had appointed a moderate instead of al-Husseini as grand mufti? What if the two-state solution offered by the Peel Commission report in 1937 had gone through?

“Jews would have gotten less than 20% of the country and there would have been no Palestinian refugee crisis. There would have been no Nakhba in 1948. The Gaza Strip would not be teeming with refugees today,” Kessler said, describing what he knows are unknowable but still strong possibilities.

As a counter to the mufti, who would later line up with Adolf Hitler and further discredit the Palestinian cause, Kessler offers an extensive treatment of Musa Alami, a Palestinian nationalist known for his relationships with the British and the Jews.

Alami met several times with Ben-Gurion during the 1930s, suggesting ways in which Jewish national ambitions might coexist within a regional majority of Arabs, with both sides gaining from the economic and public health progress being made by the Jews.

“Despite diametrically opposed political aspirations they met in an atmosphere of real candor and respect, and they really tried to reach a modus vivendi, to reach some kind of agreement that both sides could live with,” Kessler explained. “Alami was not a peacenik. He does his part for the Arab Revolt, and then some. He’s not opposed to violence, nor is Ben-Gurion.

“But I do think his personality was kind of the polar opposite of the mufti’s in his ability to hear the other side, to understand the other side and to try to reach a solution. And it gives a glimpse I think of perhaps what could have been had things gone a bit different.”

In the book Kessler strives to view the emerging Jewish state from the Palestinian perspective. “It’s not that difficult to understand that people who were living in a certain land and whose ancestors have lived there for centuries wouldn’t look all that kindly on another people coming in en masse,” said Kessler. “We don’t need a very active imagination to understand that.”

But the question, he continued, “is how they responded, how they registered their opposition. And with every rejection by the Arabs in Palestine, their position got worse and worse and it continues to this day.”

Kessler mostly leaves it to readers to decide if the lessons of the 1930s are useful in 2024. He’d also like his book to be seen as a lens on a time period that hasn’t gotten its due, at least in English, and one that has “so many fascinating, complex and compelling characters on all three sides of the Palestine triangle: the Jews, the Arabs and the British.”

But at the end of the book Kessler returns to Musa Alami, who lived most of the rest of his long life (he died in 1984) exiled from his native Jerusalem, raising money and international support for Arab refugee youths living in Jordan.

In an interview after the Six-Day War, Alami offered both sides a prescient warning that sounds like what Kessler calls “a note of hope”: “You are not considering the future — you are only considering the present,” he told the Israelis. “And we are not considering the future — only our present suffering. But I do believe, still now, that this country has the makings of peace.”

The Qur’an states: “Glory to He Who carried His servant by night, from the Holy Sanctuary (in Makkah) to the distant Sanctuary (in Jerusalem), the precincts of which We have blessed, so that We might show him (Prophet Muhammad) some of Our signs. Surely He (God) is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing One.” (Qur’an 17:1)

The slogan: “From the river to the sea” could truly be aspirational by making it focus on both people first and the land itself second. “From the river to the sea Palestinians and Israelis should be freed of hatred and suffering by ‘a two state for two peoples sharing of the land peacefully solution.'”

On October 27, 1978, only five years after Egypt started the Yom Kippur War with a surprise attack on Israel, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving a Middle East accord. The Yom Kippur War was followed six years later by a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Could the same process follow the defeat of Hamas, and its opposition to a two state solution? The only possible chance for avoiding more wars is the two state solution. To establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That will not be possible with the current leaders on either side.

Extremists, both Israeli and Palestinian, will do all they can to sink the idea, as they have done since 1937.

If fourteen months of war does not deliver enough of a shock to break deeply-held prejudices and to make the idea of two states viable, nothing will. And without a mutually acceptable way of ending the conflict, more generations of Palestinians and Israelis will be sentenced to more wars.

Although it might seem impossible now, I do believe that within a decade or two Muslims will visit Jerusalem and pray together with Jews as Prophet Zechariah predicts: “Then everyone who survives from all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths.” (14:16)

For almost nine decades political nationalist leaders in Israel and Palestine have failed to find a way to end the conflict between their two peoples. Perhaps religious leaders who understand the religious importance of repentance, humility, forgiveness, compromise and hope for peace in overcoming almost nine decades of pain and anger.

Recently a BBC reporter Rushdi Abualouf, reported that Prof. Dr. Salman al-Dayah, former dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Law at the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University of Gaza, had issued a fatwa condemning Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, triggering a devastating war.

Dayah’s fatwa criticizes Hamas for “violating Islamic principles governing jihad. If the pillars, causes, or conditions of jihad are not met, it must be avoided in order to avoid destroying people’s lives. This is something that is easy to guess for our country’s politicians, so the attack must have been avoided.”


Dr. Salman al-Dayah, argues that the significant civilian casualties in Gaza, together with the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure that have followed the Oct. 7 attack, means that it was in direct contradiction to the teachings of Islam. Hamas, he says, failed its obligations of “keeping fighters away from the homes of defenseless civilians…and saving enough supplies for them.”


Dr. Salman al-Dayah points to Quranic verses that set strict conditions for the conduct of jihad, including the necessity of avoiding actions that provoke an excessive and disproportionate response by an opponent. He also stresses that Muslim leaders are obligated to ensure the safety and well-being of non-combatants, including by providing food, medicine, and refuge to those not involved in the fighting.” (BBC News)

I very much admire Professor Dr. Salman al-Dayah who must be a brave and compassionate man to issue a Fatwa Criticizing the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel. This is a very courageous time to choose reconciliation rather than retribution between Jews and Muslims in this world. The time for enmity must be over.

The Qur’an also refers to Prophet Abraham as a community or a nation: “Abraham was a nation/community [Ummah]; dutiful to God, a monotheist [hanif], not one of the polytheists.” (16:120) If Prophet Abraham is an Ummah then fighting between the descendants of Prophets Ishmael and Isaac is a civil war and should always be avoided:,”Nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4)

If all Arabs and Jews can live up to the ideal that ‘the descendants of Abraham’s sons should never make war against each other’ is the will of God; we will help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”…(Isaiah 19:23-5)

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The Truths We Hold: An American Journey – Kamala Harris

BY TIASUNEP AIER

Kamala Harris, now the Vice President of the United States, reflects on her life and career in The Truths We Hold. First published on January 8, 2019, this memoir chronicles her journey from the daughter of immigrants to a top lawmaker. It focuses on her values of justice, equality, and integrity, presenting Harris’s political vision while showcasing key moments from her career as a prosecutor and U.S. Senator.

The book covers Harris’s childhood in Oakland, California, her time as District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, and her role as a U.S. Senator. Harris reflects on her work in criminal justice reform, immigration, and civil rights, weaving personal stories with her policy positions. The overarching themes of justice and fairness serve as the foundation for her political philosophy.

One of the book’s strengths lies in Harris’s ability to blend personal anecdotes with policy discussions, making her political ideas more accessible. Her dedication to civil rights and criminal justice reform is a major focus, and her stories about family and mentorship humanize her professional achievements.

From a conservative point of view, however, the memoir lacks a balanced discussion of contentious issues like law enforcement and immigration. While Harris champions reform, she glosses over concerns about her support for policies viewed as too progressive, such as her stance on healthcare (Medicare for All) and criminal justice reforms that some argue could undermine law and order. There is little engagement with conservative viewpoints on these matters, making the book feel one-sided.

Moreover, while Harris emphasizes her record as a “progressive prosecutor,” critics might argue that her policies, such as opposing the death penalty in certain cases or lenient approaches to sentencing, could be seen as soft on crime—something conservatives might see as a potential threat to public safety. Additionally, her tone is sometimes more campaign-oriented than reflective, with policy achievements being presented without deep self-criticism.

I admired Harris’s driven passion for justice and her belief in the American system’s potential to bring changes. However, as someone who leans more towards conservative values and as someone who values strong law enforcement and economic freedom, I found her progressive stance on criminal justice and healthcare hard to reconcile with concerns about public safety and fiscal responsibility. At times, I felt as though the book was more about promoting a political platform than engaging in genuine self-reflection.

The Truths We Hold offers a well-constructed narrative of Kamala Harris’s career and values, but readers looking for a nuanced debate on controversial issues may find the book lacking. While her story is inspiring, it leans heavily toward progressive ideals and leaves out substantial engagement with opposing perspectives. Nevertheless, for those interested in her career and political rise, it’s an insightful look into the motivations of one of America’s most prominent political figures.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Book Reviews: Two New Books Raise Big Concerns About Innocent Men In US Prisons

This combination of cover images shows "Framed Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions" by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey, left, and "The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men and a 20 Year Fight for Justice" by Dan Slepian. (Doubleday via AP, left, and Celadon via AP).

BY JEFF ROWE

“Framed: Astonishingly True Stories of Wrongful Convictions,” by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey (Doubleday) and “The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men and a 20-Year Fight for Justice“ by Dan Slepian (Celadon)

It’s painful to read those stories of men wrongly condemned and forgotten, slowly abandoned by everyone, casualties of an overzealous criminal justice system.

“Framed” is Grisham’s second foray into nonfiction and his storytelling skills are well-displayed here. McCloskey is founder of Centurion Ministries, which works to free the wrongly convicted. “The Sing Sing Files” focuses on six men imprisoned in the infamous New York prison.

Both books are meticulous to a fault in recounting the steps that led each of the men they focus on to conviction and imprisonment. “Framed” is more clinical, carefully assembling the stories of those wrongly imprisoned, but Slepian’s book is the more compelling and emotionally wrenching of the two, starkly illuminating the unimaginable suffering of the wrongly imprisoned and their families.

He describes one prisoner this way: “Frustration and anger seemed to be radiating off him like heat.”

Grisham and McCloskey present 10 unrelated cases around the nation; Slepian focuses on how the pursuit of one wrongful conviction led him to examine the other five.

Slepian cites figures suggesting 100,000 more innocents remain among approximately 2 million people locked away in American jails and prisons. America leads the world in the number of people imprisoned.

As the authors explain, we came to this sorry state through a combination of factors: Pressure to close cases, police and prosecutorial neglect, outright fabrications of evidence, confirmation bias and the tendency to disregard information that does not fit our emerging theory. Bogus “experts” swayed juries. Jurors gave in to pressure from other jurors. Judges refused new trials. Prosecutor reliance on jailhouse informants factored into one-fifth of wrongful convictions, according to an estimate by the Innocence Project cited in Slepian’s book. We the people have not summoned the “collective will to hold people in power accountable,” he writes.

All three writers are measured in their accounting for these justice system failures although the reader is sure to find some of the police, prosecutors and judges described here to be the real villains.

But most of the guilt for a failed system must be ours, Grisham writes. “If we as a society had the political gumption to change unfair laws, practices and procedures, we could avoid virtually all wrongful convictions.”

Well, maybe.

For now, emerging as heroes are defense lawyers who work for free, sometimes for years, to secure justice for those lacking any resources to hire lawyers to pursue their cases. In the cases described in these two books, the authors themselves deserve great credit for persevering in their quest to free the innocent.

It’s discouraging that this topic is not a subject in the presidential campaign nor, apparently, much of an issue to our fellow Americans. But for Slepian, investigating cases of wrongful imprisonment has become a focal part of his work as an NBC news producer. He writes that the sheer number of such cases is part of the “tragic consequences of America’s system of mass incarceration.”

And to him personally, pursuing such cases is more than a journalistic quest, it is, he writes, part of his “obligation as a human being.”

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

What Happened When An Ohio Megachurch Decided To Tackle Racism

BY RUTH GRAHAM

Crossroads Church in Cincinnati has a style that stands out for its flash and irreverence even among its megachurch peers. At one Easter service, a production team shot confetti from the stage and presented a large cake with icing studded with communion wafers. “Jesus is alive!” they announced. “It’s a party!”

But in many other ways Crossroads is a typical American megachurch, an institutional category known for an eagerness to attract people unfamiliar or uncomfortable with traditional religion. The church is broadly conservative, but wary of stepping too noisily into political or cultural controversies.

Hahrie Han, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, encountered Crossroads when she was researching a campaign to bring universal preschool education to Cincinnati in 2016. The ballot initiative proposed to raise taxes and direct new resources to poor, mostly Black communities. Han was curious about the initiative’s decisive victory in a rancorous election year, and she began hearing from the campaign’s leaders about one surprising source of their success: Crossroads, a mostly white evangelical church, had marshaled hundreds of volunteers to phone-bank energetically for the measure’s passage.

As Han discovered, the Crossroads volunteers had gone through a six-week workshop on racial justice called Undivided. On the surface, Undivided sounded similar to a corporate D.E.I. training program meant to propel participants to examine their own biases and commit to personal and social transformation.

The difference is that Undivided worked. At least, for certain people, and not without a lot of conflict and discomfort along the way.

But the changes are real. In “Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church,” Han follows four people involved with Undivided over the course of several years: a Black woman, a white woman, a white man and Undivided’s co-founder Chuck Mingo, a Black pastor at Crossroads. She depicts them forming friendships, asking questions, challenging one another, shifting their politics, volunteering and finding the courage to stand up to casual and systemic racism around them.

The span of Han’s research is punctuated by high-profile killings of unarmed Black men by police officers across the country, complicating her subjects’ progress with urgency and grief.

In one of the most poignant story lines, a Black Undivided participant whom Han calls Sandra, a pseudonym, sees her marriage to her white husband unravel over the course of the book. After a fight on their honeymoon about the killing of Trayvon Martin, the couple had maintained their peace by avoiding all discussions of race. As Sandra explores her own identity deeply for the first time, her husband withdraws.

Han has written and co-written previous books about volunteerism in the 2008 Obama campaign and civic participation by underprivileged Americans, among other topics. She is attuned to the subtle and unglamorous work of effecting real change. Her intimacy with her subjects shows in the way she convincingly portrays not just meetings and marches, but quiet family moments and internal wrestling. Yet she also makes clear that individual change is tenuous on its own.

Grant, a white man, begins his Undivided journey by confronting blind spots in his close relationship with his adopted Black brother. Ultimately, he leaves his job in the Ohio state prison system after realizing he can no longer stay silent about the injustices he has observed there.

People learn about race and social control in community, Han writes: “If individuals strike out on isolated journeys of antiracism, but allow the families, workplaces, faith institutions, social groups and neighborhoods they inhabit to sustain the status quo, change always remains fragile.”

The workshop itself is hardly magical. Undivided sessions open with prayer, followed by a lesson delivered on the main stage and in small-group sessions. The premise, as Han puts it, is that “antiracism was fundamental to their calling as Christians.” Most of the participants are strangers to one another — Crossroads had 22,000 weekly attendees when Han started her research — but they begin with a level of trust because of their shared faith. And the leaders plan to push beyond the kind of performative antiracism that consists of social media posts and tote bags.

Undivided launches with the church’s full support. But later, the program’s leaders begin exploring other political actions, including involvement in another ballot initiative that would have reclassified crimes like drug possession as misdemeanors. These discussions cause tension in the church, where older white members prefer messages about unity and civility. Han deftly describes a moderate, well-meaning institution lurching toward and away from substantive activism, without giving up entirely.

By implication, the book serves as a portrait in miniature of the American religious landscape. Crossroads’ top leaders, who cooperated with Han’s reporting, see Undivided as meeting a real desire in their congregation to confront racial injustice, but they are also understandably sensitive to internal blowback.

How can an institution where attendance and participation are voluntary encourage their members to grow without making them so uncomfortable that they decamp for other churches, or for the innumerable other places to spend a Sunday morning in 21st-century America? “Undivided” offers a refreshingly complex portrait of an institution and its members on the rocky path to change.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE