The uselessness of perpetrators memories
595800
A lot has been written about why the holocaust happened. This book reviews the actions of a minor perpetrator, and administrative official attracted to the Nazi party because it was good for his promotion, obeying administrative directions because he would not enjoy advancement if he did not obey. The perpetrator, as the war evolves slowly starts to make demonstrably false excuses using the usual "I did not know", " I was not there" clichs. The perpetrators wife complains of the scarcity of luxury goods while Jews are being relocated, ghettoized, "going up in smoke. How banal this all seems, how blind the actors all anti-Semitic and how eager all of proving that they had nothing to do with it.

This is not a scientific or statistical text, it is a true story about the human nature and how we as ordinary people twist and turn to make our past more palatable to ourselves.  A book for people interested in how it all could have happened.
3037765
This book tells the story of David Pelzer, a victim of California's third worst case of child abuse.  The book, written by David himself, chronicles his life as a terrified young child growing up with an abusive, alcoholic mother and a spineless father who simply turned away when the abuse started.  Over the course of several years, young David was forced to endure abuse that is almost impossible to comprehend.  He never received regular meals, he was forced to sleep in the garage which would got very cold at night, his drunken mother tried to force him to lie down on a lit stove, he was stabbed in the abdomen, yet his mother refused to take him to the hospital for medical care.  He was simply sent back to his worn-out army cot in the basement.
Soon, David turned to stealing food from other children at school.  This worked for a while, but word soon got back to his mother, who beat him severely for his stealing.
The abuse suffered by David was not just physical; it was emotional and verbal as well.  David's mother soon quit referring to him by his name.  He soon became "the boy", and finally "it".  He was never allowed any interaction with the rest of his family.  He simply remained in his own little world while the rest of the family ate their meals and did other family things.  David was then forced to clean up after the family's meals within a specified time or he would receive another beating from mother.  If he made it, sometimes he was "rewarded" with a few left-over scraps from the dirty plates.  This type of abuse continued for years. The only thing that kept David going was his desire for someone to love him, take care of him, and call him their son.
I cried several times while reading this book.  I immediately thought of my own son while reading and how much I love him.  It is incomprehensible to me how anyone could possibly harm a young, defenseless child.
This book rates as one of the best I've ever read.  As a father of two young children with another on the way, I simply cannot comprehend how someone could abuse their own children so severely.  Granted, David's mother and father both had severe drinking problems, but that is no excuse for abuse.  Also, why was David singled out?  None of the other children were ever abused.  David deserves tremendous credit for surviving for so long.  Without his strong courage and desire to live, he probably would have ended up dead.  All children are a blessing.  Parents should be thankful for their children and love them unconditionally. They are gifts from God.
349774
When I read Jessica Sterns Terror in the Name of God in 2003, I wondered how she could walk fearlessly into terrorist strongholds to interview warlords, a practice that got her colleague Daniel Pearl beheaded. She answers that question in her latest book, Denial, as she explores fragments of her childhood that she had been hiding from herself and others.

Stern and her younger sister were barely toddlers when their mother, fighting cancer, died from radiation experiments by their grandfather, a physician who had lost his hospital privileges. He had already begun sexually grooming Jessica, taking her into the shower, causing recurrent nightmares of a sickeningly soft white slug that spoke nauseating things to her.

In 1973, the sisters were young teens, their father in Europe with his third wife, when a stranger with a gun broke into the home where they were staying, forced them to put on little girls clothes, and raped them. Police in the tranquil town of Concord, Massachusetts, refused to believe the girls did not know their assailant. The same pedophile had raped girls since 1971 with at least 44 victims around Concord, Cambridge, Natick, and Marthas Vineyard. Police never warned those communities of the danger and closed the Sterns file when their father claimed his daughters had gotten over the ordeal.

Thirty-three years later, with Jessica Sterns renewed interest, a Concord police lieutenant doggedly searched files from several towns and identified the serial rapist, who already had gone to prison, come home, and hung himself.

Stern interviews her rapists old friends and discovers a history of denial in his hometown, which had been afflicted by a succession of pedophile priests. Denial also dominated Sterns father, whose Jewish family suffered appalling brutality in the Holocaust.

This startlingly honest memoir reveals the ways that ordinary people go numb in the face of unbearable truth and shows the damage this denial does to children whose outcries are not believed.

Readers who want linear narration may struggle with her extraordinary writing as Stern draws us into the foggy, repetitive texture of her own dissociating mind. She demonstrates the irresistible power of denial, not only for victims, but also for bystanders who want to get on with their lives.

Dissociation still overwhelms this expert with intolerable sleepiness or sudden hypervigilance. Her research assistant gently points out similarities between her and his father, who brought his PTSD symptoms home from Vietnam.

Stern describes the way Islamic terrorists rape little boys on Thursday nights to shame them into becoming fearless jihadists. Then, on Fridays, the rapists claim absolution.

Both Stern and her aging father find redemption through sharing their most unspeakable memories, and she dedicates the book to him.
2513711
This books takes you back to a time young people cannot imagine. The fear, of knowing you could be killed just because and no one of authority will help. There are many with Emmetts blood on their hands.  Anyone who knew, but was too cowardly to warn Mr. Mose Wright. Knew, but refused to testify. Sad. It is shocking that the racist, pot bellied sheriff HC Strider has a portion of a hwy named after him. Carolyn Bryant-Donham will spend an eternity in the pit of hell for her actions. Somethings are unforgivable. I wonder what the Bryant and Milam children must feel knowing their fathers are pathetic, ignorant murderers. The KKK is nothing more than a bunch of cowardly, ignorant, backward morons. They do NOT represent the white race.
3601479
A book written by and about an evil man, and one with no remorse for the multiple murders for which he is responsible. A blowhard who glorifies the killing of thousands of people in foreign countries due directly to him and his role as intelligence agent and director, particularly in Latin America. A person who tries to justify his acts with the Nuremberg defense of having acted under orders and for the sake of US national security, but who doesn't show any evidence of current benefit from these crimes against humanity. And yet he belatedly seeks to falsely minimize the numbers, perhaps for fear of these crimes coming home to haunt (see his interview in the 2007 film "The War On Democracy").

A man who was on trial for his crimes when pardoned, and who should as a criminal not be entitled to profit from his crimes and receive any profit from this book or any other related revenue source.

Read this book at a library - do not give money for it - and then find Elie Wiesel's "Night" or Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" for comparison. Note the differences in approach: Wiesel and Frankl remained humble about their lives and yet continue to do good in the world; Clarridge, who would think those two naive, is both supremely boastful and blind to the real damage he has caused to the fabric of the world. For shame. If we truly lived up to our values, a man like this would not be getting his 30 pieces of silver in retirement but would be locked up with the key thrown away for the rest of his natural life.
468209
I hated this book for so many reasons - the most important is that the victim who was stabbed 27 times is just an afterthought.  Emily who will never marry, Emily whose parents will never hold her baby and Emily who never gets any sympathy whatsoever in this self-indulgent book.
Instead we are supposed to grieve for the author who didn't even know Emily and I'm guessing didn't know the killer all that well either.  Or feel bad for the murderer because he doesn't get many radio stations or enough licorice in prison.
And then the author starts to get political about the  mental illness defense. The killer was affluent with insurance, access to health care and was on antidepressants until he stopped taking them. You can't have a government official standing over someone every day until they take their meds. Jails are meant for protection for our citizens as well as punishment.  And after reading that the murderer is now writing sadistic and violent murder stories, I'm thankful that our criminal justice system usually makes the right decision.
The author neglects a lot of important facts about this case like the victim broke up with Kevin right before his murderous rage and that he had been obsessive with his previous girlfriend as well.  I urge readers to seek out the complete story of this case before making an opinion based on this very one-sided book and the personal agenda of the author. .
3788876
It fires-off its various sounds infrequently, perhaps once every ten to fifteen minutes. But of course this is why it is so diabolical. At first the "victim(s)" will barely notice but after a few hours they'll start wondering why a doorbell keeps ringing, a cricket keeps chirping or a nauseating high frequency squeal has them climbing the walls every so often. By the end of the first day, the victims should be worked up into a low-grade state of diffuse anxiety. Give them a week of this treatment and sleep will begin to suffer as the torture infects the autonomic parts of their brains. By the end of a month, expect a 911 call at almost any time after your chosen victims go totally mad.
Or, if you're like me, the smirk on your face will give away within the first ten minutes and then someone will steal the damned thing for their own nefarious purposes. The truth is that it's an amusing toy and a reasonable effective practical joke.
67749
I bought this book for my Kindle about five days ago, and  although I am in the process of moving from one house to our new house, and I found myself wanting to sit down and read more of this book!
The book starts out with the killer's childhood, and it's a brief but incredibly informative look at what the killer did as a teen. Chilling insight.
Roger Kibbe is one of the most disgusting people I have read about, and I have read about other serial killers. His crimes were so awful, and he was so evil and patient and cruel; I just could not imagine what went through this monster's mind. To top it off, the murderer's BROTHER was a Homicide Detective! I disliked the brother as well; he HAD to know. He was giving his brother advice as to how to deal with the police, so the killer had an edge!
The tenacity of all the detectives and crime scene analysts, trace evidence experts, etc,, well, I cannot say enough good things about them. Without these caring people, the crimes would never have been solved.
It is disturbing to know how political it is with law enforcement, and don't even get me STARTED with the FBI. They were worse than useless in this case, as they have been known to be in many cases. Example: the FBI KNEW who the Unibomber was. Had the Unibomber not sent his "manifesto" for his BROTHER to read, who knows how long he would have gone on?
Back to the murders in the Sacramento area, the killer did his henious deeds in one county, dumped the body in an other county, sometimes driving 100 miles to dump the bodies. He knew that the police departments can get "territorial" and not share information. I am a Homicide Detective's daughter, and when I think what my Dad saw and had to deal with, and then, have someone tell him it was "not his case anymore"; it's infuriating. It would have helped so much if all the departments had worked together and created a TRUE task force, instead of the one the Detective's had to try and work with. "Jane Does" were lying in places, even buried, when the person had been reported missing ages ago! Who knows how many people Roger Kibbe murdered? Many more than he was charged with, that is a fact. The killer was married, to an annoying and bossy, yet pathetic woman. Her self esteem had to be so low, or she is such a delusional person, that she did not see the thing she had married.  Harriet (his wife) is NOT a sympathetic person. I believe SHE should have been arrested as an accessory to murder after what she did. (I'd write what she did, but I don't want to spoil the book for you). Kibbe was a quiet, non confrontational man, who stuttered when he lied. He looked like ANYBODY, and he was very intelligent. One of his victims got away, and she described what he was STARTING to do; her story sent chills down my spine. His voice "switched" so quickly she wondered if she was with the same person! My God, she was lucky.
Although  I am happy that this monster is never going to see the light of day outside of prison, and that he is in Level 4, and "misses his arts and crafts" (oh boo hoo), the last sentence of the book was...............well, it was one of those "oh my God" moments.
Wonderfully researched and written, (I plan to read more books by this author), I could not recommend this book more highly.
2704554
The writer holds your attention to the end.  Personally, I think the Sharp, Newsom and Klenner families created two monsters.  They are as responsible as Susie Lynch and Fritz Klenner.  They certainly must share the blame in these horrific crimes.  It's scary to think that somebody as stupid as Justice Susie Sharp sat on the bench.  Nothing to be proud of here.
2798398
I think the author needs to refresh his memory on this case. I don't even know where to start. The most glaring claim is that police spent days tracking false leads because no one mentioned Russell Smrekar. This is not correct. The morning after the murders more than one family member mentioned the incident. One of those people being my father. Robin Fry was his niece and my cousin.

I very vividly remember officers coming to visit our home in Decatur because it was not something that ever happened before. Being a kid I lingered in the hallway while the grownups talked in the front room. I remember my Dad mentioning the incident at Kroger being the only thing he could think of that Jay would have been involved with. Why the detectives wouldn't have looked for anything in their files that would have involved Jay or Robin first is beyond me. I would think that it being a pretty recent incident in such a small town someone would have recalled the link pretty quickly.
1634114
This book caused me to reflect on the many times I made judgements about people and their behavior based on my perceptions or fake news.  What damage have I done to those people's lives? What anger and bitterness have I held onto, to my detriment, for wrongs done to me?

 The news media writes their stories with great bias and even when you think they are reporting just facts, they are selective as to what facts they choose to report.  So many criminal cases are decided in the court of public opinion and, sadly, most people's opinion are formed by what they are fed by fake news.  They have an agenda, and it is not to bring us the truth.
2845145
Not as good or objective as Children Who Remember Previous Lives, but I would recommend this book as a supplement to it.
3146399
Nietzsche wrote "There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing." Portelli's powerful reconstruction of the Nazi massacre of 335 civilians in retaliation for 33 German casualties in a partisan attack in Rome, through his artful weaving of the memories and judgments of surviving perpetrators, victims, their wives and children, and their children's children, demonstrates how such "perspectivism" in the hands of a master oral historian engenders a complex understanding of a traumatic event. I believe I am wiser for reading this book; I know I am sadder.
1350457
You'll have to read the book. It is brutal. The perpetrators called it "cleansing." The victims were told to assemble at such-and-such a time and date for exile or relocation to another place.

Couple a learned man's photographic memory with an unbelievable experience and a book like this results. It is a lesson on how men become beasts - not only the pitiful victims, but so many of the everyday people who murdered them. This holocaust was part of a government-directed program that saw two million minority people killed. Father Balakian, the luckiest man in the world, who vowed not to die in order to tell, covers much of the history.
1564829
In the Australian Outback in 1980, 8-month-old Azaria Chamberlain disappeared from her family's camp tent at Ayers Rock. Mother Lindy Chamberlain claimed to have seen a dingo emerging from the tent and it was initially assumed that the dingo had taken the baby for food. Gradually she was considered less and less credible while the state's investigators increasingly felt she had killed the baby and began a series of inquests ending in a trial. Lindy was convicted of murder and her husband Michael of helping her cover up the crime after the fact. Richard Shears' true crime account, MOTHER ON TRIAL, details the case in standard true crime fashion from the child's death to investigation to trial.
The main focus of the book is the unjust conviction of Lindy based on the emotions stirred by the case and on a raft of faulty science, and on the subsequent re-evaluation of the evidence and Lindy's conviction.

The positives of the book are the case itself - it's not every day that you read about a case involving a dingo and the death of a baby - and Shears' ability to write. He is crisp, reportorial, and no-nonsense; and there is none of the melodrama and smarminess found in lesser writing.
A neutral factor, I guess, would be the absence of any background information on the Chamberlains, but at the same time, the book does not pretend to be anything more than an in-depth look at the case and its aftermath, and it is - as they say - what it is.
The main negative is - as is so often the case - an unnecessary volume of repetition of the forensic evidence. Forensic evidence is a major focus of the book and was the basis for the review of Lindy's conviction, but it still got tedious reading about all of it three different times: in the investigation and the first and second trials; and it got skimmable there for a while.

MOTHER ON TRIAL is basically a well-written and interesting book. I had never heard of the case, but was wondering if I had been in Australia at the time I'd have learned anything that wasn't already on the news. This is a decent book, but hardly must reading.
2885609
Professor Kuromiya has produced a work on a topic much covered in historical literature: Stalin's reign of terror. What Kuromiya adds is
a record of the original sources of documentation kept by the Soviet
secret police. These notes offer "bureaucratically efficient" records of
each prisoner's dialogue with captors, interrogators and torturers.
The language is bland, like a record from the motor vehicles bureau. But the context of these notes, the hidden torments, truths and lies they reveal, is chilling. Kuromiya's familiarity with the archival records allows him to infer pieces of "truth" amidst the vast conspiracy of offical lies. The records themselves are dry, even mundane, but the story thy tell, and that Kuromiya retells, is one of life, truth and, ultimately, of injustice and death.
1384832
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Santayana's seminal quote, while often dismissed as trite, has the ring of truth to carry it forward.  Rebecca Gordons newest book is an attempt to give us, as a nation, an opportunity to remember a past that wed much rather forget.

While I initially had some measure of discomfort with the evocation of the Nuremberg Trials, mainly because of the scope of the Holocaust seems so much greater than that of the so-called War on Terror, Gordons thorough and meticulous account of the multitude of crimes committed by nearly a generations worth of American politicians was incredibly persuasive.  She has clearly done her homework - as evidenced by her ability to not only cite chapter and verse of applicable International Law, but also to guide the reader through her argument with documented facts and, in many cases, the words of the accused themselves.

She pulls no punches and spares no one.  Even the current administration is called to account for its advocation of drone strikes as a cleaner method to fight our own Dirty War.  It is particularly dismaying to realize that what could have been a legacy of renewal for the Obama administration, after two terms of bitter political divide and the weariness of nearly a decade of war, will be forever marred by a continuation, if not escalation, of the mistakes of its predecessors.

This book has particular relevance today, in the heat of an unprecedented level of bellicose campaign rhetoric and an increasing frequency of attacks in Europe and the Middle East.  Our next president will have to make a choice on how to deal with ISIS, whether or not to take us into a third decade of an undefined war, and whether or not to bring an end to an indefensible treatment of fellow human beings.  I would hope that each and every candidate for elected office, from municipal to federal level, takes a few hours to read this book and think hard about how far we have removed ourselves from our humanity.  Because while our elected officials are, indeed, responsible for their own actions, we are the ones that not only put them there - we are the ones that keep them there.

I look forward to a new Nuremberg.