PositivePop MattersMikics recognizes Kubrick\'s ethnoreligious background as crucial to his development as a filmmaker, but he also foregrounds many other influences: his early career as a photographer, his years spent methodically seeing every movie shown in his Bronx neighbourhood, his voracious appetite for literature, and his love of chess ... At times the book reads like less of a traditional biography than a chronological, biographically-centered study of Kubrick\'s films. Each film Kubrick worked on is dealt with in turn, including a detailed account of production and an extended commentary on the film\'s themes ... Mikics\' judgements on some of the films are utterly different from my own ... At other times it feels as though Mikics\' evident admiration for Kubrick can cloud his judgements ... Mikics\' readings of the films are never dry or bogged down with academic terminology. They are sensitive to the fact that while Kubrick\'s films are the product of a singleminded vision, that vision is collaboratively realised.
PanPopMatters[Cengel] skips over the redolent notion of a time between propaganda and fake news and leans much more heavily on personal recollections and observations. Cengel was in Ukraine for some key events in the country\'s recent history...However, the narrative drifts away from these events almost as soon as it alights upon them ... [Cengel\'s] characterization of her co-workers and interviewees often grates ... More incriminatingly, however, is when Cengel feels that an elderly Jewish GULAG survivor is becoming a little too controlling about how his story is told ... There are memorable sketches of Cengel\'s brief trips to Moldova and Transnistria, which are rare English-language accounts of those places during the window of time Cengel outlines. As when Cengel tells us about the news stories she covered, these accounts are over just as they were getting started. The reader is plunged back into the details of her personal life ... rarely foregrounds the voices of others, and rarely gives the reader insights into the cultures of Latvia and Ukraine ... Even Chernobyl, though it features prominently in the book\'s title, is only briefly covered ... Ultimately, From Chernobyl With Love is more illuminating of the American mindset than it is of Latvia and Ukraine, two nations for which the prefix \'post-Soviet\' tells only part of their complex stories.