Pinochet: The Politics of Torture (Fast Track)

Book Description

"Like a prose line drawing, a literary appetizer to a still unwritten main course: a thorough political biography of the late 20th century's most visible dictator."
—Washington Post Book World

Near midnight on October 16, 1998, officers of Scotland Yard entered the London hospital room of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and arrested him on charges of torturing and murdering Spanish citizens. The arrest sent shockwaves around the world, delighting his detractors and the families of his regime's victims, and dismaying his supporters, including Margaret Thatcher. It marked the first time a former head of state had been detained outside his own country on charges of crimes against humanity, and thus signaled a clear warning to former dictators and heads of abusive regimes.

Through interviews, eyewitness accounts, and new sources, veteran journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy here sifts through the General's personal life, rise to power, and arrest and internment. In clear, unforgiving prose, Pinochet: The Politics of Torture tells the riveting story of legal intrigue behind the search for justice.

Customer Reviews:

A liberal's view of the Pinochet dictatorship........2005-04-13

This book begins well enough in the description of Augusto Pinochet. The first two chapters describe his early family life along with his reluctant decision to join the junta plotting the overthrow of the Allende government. The last two chapters then go into unproven killing, torture, and drug and weapons trafficing. The author tries to give us a picture of a dictator that knew everything going on in Chile. I am not sure that is the case. I do know this dictatorship in the process of overthrowing the legal Marxist government killed 3,000-4,000 people. That is a fact. I am sure torture and killings were part of the plan to stay in power. I am unsure whether they were systemic, as they are in Castro's Cuba.
I don't believe this is a balanced view on Pinochet's Chile. I believe there is much truth in this book, but also stories that don't pass the muster of honest reporting.

book REVIEWS should do what they say on the packet.......2004-10-08

the only problem with this book is that it's not very good. would people stick to reviewing it instead of launching wild political polemics ?

Could be better, but a good book about a despot.......2003-06-24

Gives a very unbiased account of Pinochets life and times. The author talks about the state terrorism of the DNIA(Chilean Intelligence) against foes at home and abroad. Probably the best unbiased literary acccount of Pinochet and his despotic military Junta.

liberal lies.......2003-01-29

Pinochet saved the country of Chile. More people suffered under the Cuban led Allende. Pinochet is the 20th century George Washington.

The true story of the chilean dictator and his regime.......2002-07-27

this is an excellent book to understand the nature of the act commited in Chile by Augusto Pinochet. Althought today many of his supporters try to deny the horror of Pinochet's regime the truth about the atrocities commited by the so call "chilean Libertator" are evident on this book. Pinochet's crimes include genocide,murder,Terrorism, torture, kidnaping and assasination on chilean territory and abroad.The victims of his crimes were chilean citizens and foreigners (including US citizens). This book gives an account of this dictator life and acts in a very organized way from his childhood to his arrest on London during 1998 (as an international criminal).

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A worthy successor to Thomas Hardy and Aldo Leopold

Lost on the range

The frontier we all can imagine

Dispelling the romantic myth of the American West

Read once and then again

Hole in the Sky: A Memoir
William Kittredge
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679740066
Release Date: 1993-06-01

Book Description

William Kittredge's stunning memoir is at once autobiography, a family chronicle, and a Westerner's settling of accounts with the land he grew up in. This is the story of a grandfather whose single-minded hunger for property won him a ranch the size of Delaware but estranged him from his family; of a father who farmed with tractors and drainage ditches but consorted with movie stars; and of Kittredge himself, who was raised by cowboys and saw them become obsolete, who floundered through three marriages, hard drinking, and madness before becoming a writer. Host hauntingly, Hole in the Sky is an honest reckoning of the American myth that drove generations of Americans westward -- and what became of their dream after they reached the edge.

Customer Reviews:

A worthy successor to Thomas Hardy and Aldo Leopold.......2005-10-16

William Kittredge is a worthy successor to Thomas Hardy and Aldo Leopold. "Hole in the Sky" is both a personal memoir and a portrait of a vanished way of life in the remote Warner Valley in eastern Oregon. The author witnessed the end of farming with horse teams when diesel tractors came to the valley after WW II and changed the rural economy forever. Thomas Hardy's novels ("Far from the Madding Crowd" and others) tell a comparable story of the English countryside in the 19th Century, when the agrarian society that had existed for 400 years was disappearing. Mr. Kittredge also tells how the tractors meant the end of wild birds and mammals that had been part of his life in Warner Valley. He writes with an ecologist's eye for the land, reminiscent of Aldo Leopold in his "Sand County Almanac," a book that introduced so many of us to ecology and the concept of saving wild places.

Readers may be inspired to visit Warner Valley for themselves, and it is a worthwhile trip for lovers of the wild. I first went there 50 years ago, when it was still 36 miles from the nearest paved road. Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge protects the high fault-block mountain looming above Mr. Kittredge's valley. Its marshy lakes harbor many species of ducks and waterbirds. My brother-in-law just returned from a visit in September 2005, and he reports: "pronghorn antelope on the hillsides all 'round, glorious views in all directions, grand sweeping vistas." That's where William Kittredge comes from.

Lost on the range.......2003-06-14

Kittredge's excellent, thoughtful, and well-written book is a memoir of growing up on a ranch in southeastern Oregon. This is arid country where spring runoff from the mountains gathers in lakes and swamps used for millennia as a stopover by migrating waterbirds. Enter the enterprising Kittredge family, and during the 20th century thousands of acres here were transformed into a vast irrigated ranch, its chief output evolving from cattle to grain to hay to feed milling and feedlots. More to the point, they built an agricultural empire and became wealthy.

The author, born into this world in the 1930s, looks back from the vantage point of 1992, long after leaving the ranch behind and settling in Montana. What he sees is the wreckage of three generations blighted by ambition, greed, arrogance, and no small amount of alcohol. Kittredge talks often about how personal stories illuminate and ground people's lives, yet he and so many of the people around him are directionless and unmoored. His book is a story in which words like "reckless," "hapless," and "heedless" are often used to describe actions.

It is a painful book because there is so much heartache in it, so much confusion, shame, isolation, and fear. There are betrayals, infidelities, friendships and marriages ended, deaths from accidents and mishaps. In all of it, from earliest memories to those of a man on the verge of middle-age, the author describes a deep uncertainty about his own worth and his purpose in life. For many years, it seems to be only the grueling hard work of the ranch, which he only half understands, that keeps him distracted from a sense that nothing is real. (Steady consumption of alcohol and extramarital sex also figure into the mix.)

The book is something of a coming-of-age story about a young man whose manhood continually seems to elude him, well into his thirties. He can go through the motions in the hardworking environment of seasoned cowboys and field hands (an episode in which he takes the place of an injured hay stacker is an example), but he remains unsure of himself, wanting the security of the family ranch, while hating himself for not pursuing the writing career he believes is his real vocation. It's a wonderfully (and frustratingly) complex picture of a young man self-destructing. And in his seeming indifference to his own children, you sense a repetition of the same indifferent parenting that has led him into this emotional cul-de-sac. Significantly, he remarks often about the lack of a guiding hand to show him the way to be a man.

As a kind of confessional, it is a compelling book, and the impact of the story is underscored by the vast Western landscape against which it plays out. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the West and ranch life, cowboys, family sagas, and coming-of-age memoirs. As a companion volume, I'd also suggest Judy Blunt's ranch memoir "Breaking Clean" for its similar themes of emotional dislocation.

The frontier we all can imagine.......2001-10-02

William Kittridge's autobiography, A HOLE IN THE SKY begins in the wilderness around the foothills of southeastern Oregon and retells, in lucid detail, the events of his childhood leading up to his time in the Air Force, to his many marriages, to his emergence as a writer who writes in a prophetic voice with a great sense of prose.
Looking back to his childhood years, Kittridge aims to return to that innocent age and allow the reader to engage in his coming of age...to the point where your feet are engulfed in the wet grass of early morning dew, and you imagine the grandeur of taking care of 8,000 acres of open territory.

In the end, he claims that: "We are a part of what is sacred. That is our main defense against craziness, our solace, the source of our best policies, and our only chance at paradise." Thus, we are open to the realities that life, growing up on the western plains, was not an American historical fairy tale, but rather a true test of ones self-worth and distinction.
A wonderful read...I highly recommend!

Dispelling the romantic myth of the American West.......2000-09-17

I read this book to gain a better understanding of my cowboy neighbors in Eastern Oregon, but I gained so much more. Anyone with a passion for southeastern Oregon will love this book. At times, Kittredge's descriptions of the land are poetic. I found myself driving through Kittredge's Oregon recently, and so much of what he wrote kept leaping to the forefront of my consciousness, stimulating my own fresh perspective of this open country and those who call it home.

Read once and then again.......2000-08-13

I'm going to read this book again. The first time was to find out what it's about and who Kittredge is and what happens. The second time will be for the pleasure of reading his writing and the enjoyment of how his mind works. The conclusions he is making about life are true and gracious, out of a chaotic and sometimes miserable past. (But he doesn't moan about that--don't worry.) I'm so glad he recognized himself as a writer.

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Hole In The Sky A Memoir
William Kittredge
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H5CAEW

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Hole in the Sky a Memoir 1ST Edition
William Kittredge
Manufacturer: KNOPF, ALFRED A
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ASIN: B000SO0MPG

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Hole in the Sky!: A True Story
Dale A. Adams
Manufacturer: PublishAmerica
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ASIN: 1424100291
Release Date: 2006-07-17

Book Description

During World War II, Mexico's long-established anti-American sentiment was further entrenched by its natural loyalty to Germany. Caught between the American tourist dollar and a growing resentment toward the gringo, this bitterness festered well into 1949, the time of the story. Thus an innocent adventure became a series of blunderings by two who had been warned not to leave on their ill-fated flight, but in their arrogance they assured their critics, "We can handle it." Lost in a strange land, too late to turn back, they began to sense the precarious and foreboding relationship between Mexico and the United States. In a small village, complete with language barriers, they sought help. A congenial negotiation suddenly erupted into a serious misunderstanding. In a rare moment of wisdom they ran for their lives. They got away, but that was only the beginning. The next day they crashed.

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THE SKY THROUGH THE HOLE IN THE BONE
Savya Lee
Manufacturer: Xlibris Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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Book Description

Set in the last days of a still Bohemian Greenwich Village, this memoir is the story of a young girl's awakening and growth, told through letters and journal entries. Her adventures lead to a summer working with Georgia O'Keeffe, encounters with several atists before their fame--Wilhelm and Elaine deKooning, Franz Kline, Joachim Probst, writer Maxwell Bodenheim and later, Joseph Heller. The year is 1942, the time of the second World War and the beginning of recovery from the Great Depression. Defense plants are booming; meat, sugar, and butter are rationed, as well as gasoline. Government ration books are a must, the draft is on and young men are being conscripted into the service. For the first time, women are allowed to work at men's jobs. Marjorie, not yet twenty-one, uncomfortable with men, decides to become a lesbian and devote her life to writing. She considers herself a poet, and escapes much of the influence of the war by moving to Greenwich Village. But when she becomes involved with a group of artists and loses her virginity to Joachim (Jack) Probst, a member of the group, her lesbian dreams fade. Probst renames her Carol, her middle name, and they live together for two years. Wickie, her best friend, and recipient of most of the early letters, is the opposite of Marjorie, now Carol. Raised in Europe, the daughter of an ambassador, Wickie is sophisticated, worldly, secure in her self-image. Carol is curious, adventurous, uncertain, insecure. She met Wickie while she was selling magazines cross-country and they became instant friends. She expects someday to be transformed, to automatically become very wise. The magic age is thirty. Her life with Probst has many twists and turns: infidelities, separations, money problems. In a get-away to San Francisco she becomes an artists' model, a hat check girl, rides the cable cars, discovers French poets, and North Beach. Her adventures there with a friend, Babs, yield a sense of joy which she had not had in New York. But when Babs becomes ill, it's back to New York, to Probst and inner turmoil. She becomes pregnant and Probst leaves her. As a mother, Carol continues her Bohemian life, boarding her daughter whom she's named Lilith (the Goddess in George Bernard Shaw's play, Back To Methuselah.) After a failed romance, which nets her an apartment, she falls in love with Arthur Gunn, a painter, exactly her father's age, who plays Pygmalion to her Eliza Doolittle. He is committed to transforming her-- to making her into a lady, and she is completely open to it. She sees him as very wise. It is through him that she first learns about O'Keeffe's work, in a retrospective at the Whitney. Arthur gives up on her transformation and Carol betrays him with Ernest Guteman, a sculptor she is posing for. There is a terrifying night when she is in bed and hears Arthur sharpening knives. After that incident she moves in with Guteman and they bring Lilith, now three years old, to live with them. It is through Ernest that she meets Georgia O'Keeffe and spends a summer working with her. A very important time for Carol, the O'Keeffe influence is felt for the rest of her life. At Lilith's nursery school, Carol becomes friends with one of the teachers and through her is introduced to Richard, a young writer-painter, who is working on his PHD at NYU and teaching English at Penn State. They fall in love and eventually marry, making their home in State College, Pennsylvania. Lilith begins first grade. Marriage creates many problems, much adjusting as they learn to be a family. Carol keeps busy with writing, taking jewelry-making at the college, and learning to cook. After four years in Pennsylvania, living next to an abandoned apple orchard, getting used to being in the country, Richard applies for, and is hired at Long Beach State College in California and they relocate to Seal Beach. Their lives are many adventured. Beginning with Jack and Jeannette

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Hole in the Sky a Memoir 1ST Edition
William Kittredge
Manufacturer: KNOPF, ALFRED A
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000PY2DL0

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HOLE In The SKY. A Memoir.
William. Kittredge
Manufacturer: Knopf,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NYGKLG

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Hole in the Sky: a Memoir
William Kittredge
Manufacturer: Vintage Books USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N75B72

Book Description

This digital document is an article from SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) on October 1, 2001. The length of the article is 991 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Overturned Chariot: The Autobiography of Phan Boi Chau.
Author: Nick FREEMAN
Publication: SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 2001
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS)
Volume: 16 Issue: 2 Page: 348

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Fascinating glimpse into the life and career of the enigmatic physician whose books of prophecy have intrigued readers since their publication in the 16th century. Presents modern interpretations of his most astonishing prophecies-many imminent in the next ten years! This has been a huge bestseller. 448 pages.

Customer Reviews:

Irrelevant Information.......2003-08-28

If you're interested in the history of France, you may like this book. However, it tells far more about the history and politics of France than it does Nostradamus himself. Names are thrown in everywhere, and it's hard to distinguish whom certain information pertains to. It tells a good bit of information about his education, and it has a multitude of quatrains and their interpretations in Part Two of the book. If you're looking to read on Notradamus, there has to be a better one out there.

Interesting..........2001-02-27

It was my first time to go deeply into some of the prophecies and prophets. This book really got me throughout end of the book. It contains his birth to his death... It also contains ALL of his prophecy in order, relating with his life events. You will suprised by how much this book tells about his life.

this is a re-issue.......1999-06-18

I have read this book about 10 years ago. So please forgive me. This Title was originally published by the creative press in July of 1941. so if you are into seeing the changes in the interpretations of the Quatrains over the last 58 years, this is a book for you. If you are into reading the quatrains themselves, than this is also the book for you. I enjoyed reading it, and occasionally pull it out after seeing a documentary about the predictions.

it was very informative.......1999-02-26

i was just browsing at first but this stuff is fantasti

Nostradamus : The Man Who Saw Through Time

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Nostradamus : The Man Who Saw Through Time

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ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HZ65I4

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NOSTRADAMUS THE MAN WHO SAW THROUGH TIME

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Nostradamus The Man Who Saw Through Time
Lee McCann
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Binding: Hardcover
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Nostradamus the Man Who Saw Through Time
Lee Mccann
Manufacturer: GREENWICH HOUSE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Nostradamus, The Man Who Saw Through Time
Lee McCann
Manufacturer: A & D Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

Lee McCann's riveting book gives us a fascinating glimpse into the life of Michel Nostradamus. Part historical novel part academic examination of the accuracy of Nostradamus' prophecies. Both readable and enjoyable, just what the layman has been looking for! Since governments, sects and countries will undergo such sweeping changes, diametrically opposed to what now obtains, that were I to relate events to come, those in power now - monarchs, leaders of sects and religions - would find these so different from their own imaginings that they would be led to condemn what later centuries will learn how to see and understand. - Nostradamus

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Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Through Time
Lee McCann
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0374223173

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Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Through Time
Lee McCann
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0548081638

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Nostradamus: The man who saw through time
Lee McCann
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus, Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007FNE2Y

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Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Through Time
Lee McCann
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ProductGroup: Book
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General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1425484441

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