PositiveThe New York Review of BooksBeckerman’s wide range is impressive and makes The Quiet Before the most original book I’ve read in a long time ... Beckerman’s analysis of the Tahrir events is right as far as it goes, but it is also disappointingly limited. An enormous amount has been written about the so-called Arab Spring by Western observers, Arab journalists, and participants; Beckerman adds little that is new. And though he briefly mentions Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, formed in 2008 to support striking workers, he ignores years of political organizing by farmers, civil servants, students, and neighborhood activists. The Quiet Before is a study of radical movements’ antecedents; here the author gives them short shrift.
Wendy Lower
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewLower wants to do several things with this image. She hopes to discover who, exactly, the Jewish victims were: to say their names. Though she is an admirably dogged researcher — she uses, among other sources, live and videotaped witness testimonies, legal documents and grave excavations — in this she fails; their names are lost to history ... She also hopes to recreate the details of that day in Miropol and thus reveal the networks of complicity that made the Holocaust possible. Here, she succeeds with a vengeance: Her chapter The Aktion is devastating ... There is a vociferous debate among historians and photography critics about whether \'perpetrator photographs,\' especially from the Nazi era, should be viewed. Some argue that they revictimize the victims. Lower, rightly, disputes this, though in a sparse and not especially illuminating way. Yet her book is a refutation of those who urge us not to look.
Maggie Nelson
MixedThe New RepublicThe most forceful parts of Nelson’s book occur when she tells us \'what she read\' in various works of art. She is unafraid to be politically incorrect, bewildered, confused, and contradictory as well as appalled, shaken, revolted, amused, and exultant; she therefore offers the reader the freedom to be these things, too ... Nelson’s suppleness and hermeneutical humility—her willingness to let us watch as she works out her ideas, rather than simply present us with fully-formed pronouncements—is too rarely found in contemporary critical writing, and so in reading The Art of Cruelty I often felt grateful to her ... Alas, such passages of insightful criticism are too rare. Much of The Art of Cruelty is a mess. Nelson has a weak narrative sense; she tends to begin her chapters in one place and end in a very different one, without ever tying together her disparate ideas ... The major problem, though, is that Nelson doesn’t really \'reckon\' with the art of cruelty ... In too many places Nelson contradicts herself in ways that do not suggest complexity or nuance, but simply a muddle ... The questions that Nelson raises about what it means for artists—and audiences—to delve into cruelty need to be addressed, thought about, discussed, debated. Nelson’s analyses often fall short, but she is right to reject easy, definitive answers.
Diane Ackerman
PositiveThe Washington PostHere is a true story – of human empathy and its opposite – that is simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playful. Ackerman has a wonderful tale to tell, and she tells it wonderfully … A story like this could easily devolve into Dr. Doolittle-like sentimentality. Ackerman avoids mawkishness in two ways. First, the horrors of the Holocaust seep into almost every page, just as they should. The Zabinski household may have maintained a determined joie de vivre, but we never forget that the Guests' time in the ghetto has transformed them from accomplished, vibrant people into broken, hunted prey...Equally important, Ackerman refuses to romanticize nature. She knows that the animal world is full of – in fact, depends upon – deception and violence, and that a person's immersion in the natural world is no guarantee of goodness.
