Library Journal : In the heady days immediately after the American invasion of Afghanistan, a few hardy soldiers infiltrated the country's Taliban strongholds and fought a guerrilla war. They often used horses, worked with indigenous fighters, called in air strikes, and gathered vital intelligence. Their high point was the ousting of the Taliban from Mazar-i-sharif. A lively and exciting battle chronicle that will be popular.

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Publishers Weekly : Starred Review. In this absolutely riveting account, full of horror and raw courage, journalist Stanton (In Harm's Way) recreates the miseries and triumphs of specially trained mounted U.S. soldiers, deployed in the war-ravaged Afghanistan mountains to fight alongside the Northern Alliance-thousands of rag-tag Afghans who fought themselves to exhaustion or death-against the Taliban. The U.S. contingent, almost to a man, had never ridden horses-especially not these "shaggy and thin-legged, and short... descendents of the beasts Genghis Khan had ridden out of Uzbekistan"-but that was not the only obstacle: rattling helicopters, outdated maps, questionable air support and insufficient food also played their parts. Stanton brings each soldier and situation to vivid life: "Bennett suddenly belted out: 'It just keeps getting better and better!' Here they were, living on fried sheep and filtered ditchwater...calling in ops-guided bombs on bunkers built of mud and wood scrap, surrounded by Taliban fighters." In less than three months, this handful of troops secured a city in which a fort had been taken over by Taliban prisoners, a tangle of firefights and mayhem that became a seminal battle and, in Stanton's prose, a considerable epic: "Dead and dying men and wounded horses had littered the courtyard, a twitching choir that brayed and moaned in the rough, knee-high grass."

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Publishers Weekly : Shadowy master assassin Jason Bourne spends too much time offstage in bestseller Lustbader's cliché-ridden fourth thriller in the Ludlum franchise (after The Bourne Sanction). Having pushed his latest archenemy, Russian Leonid Arkadin, off a tanker into the ocean, Bourne assumes his foe must be dead. Not long after, Arkadin ambushes Bourne, hitting him with a rifle shot that would've killed a normal man. Seriously but not mortally wounded, Bourne decides to keep his survival a secret. The duel between the pair gets submerged in a plot line about a corrupt U.S. defense secretary's efforts to use the downing of a civilian airliner in Egypt by an Iranian missile as a casus belli. The action sequences and inevitable betrayals are old hat. Clumsy prose doesn't help (£She was dead, but he could not forget her, or what she caused in him: the tiniest fissure in the speckled granite of his soul, through which her mysterious light had begun to trickle, like the first snowmelt of spring ). (June)

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Library Journal : McWhorter, who was born into Birmingham's white elite, examines the city's pivotal role in the battle for civil rights.

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms

Publishers Weekly : Traveling into territory more commonly associated with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Newbery Medalist Fleischman (The Whipping Boy) draws attention to the especially cruel treatment of Jewish children during the Holocaust. The Great Freddie is a decorated GI, an orphan who has stayed in Europe and, by 1948, has found a toehold as a ventriloquist. And then Avrom Amos Poliakov shows up—rather, takes over. Avrom Amos is a dybbuk, a wandering soul or ghost, and, by demonstrating how he might speak for Freddie's wooden dummy, Avrom Amos convinces Freddie to let him lodge within Freddie. The dybbuk makes good on his promise, and Freddie's act becomes the toast of Paris. But Avrom Amos has his own agenda, as Freddie knows. He wants to track down the infamous SS colonel who not only killed him but also tortured children, including his sister, and before long, the dybbuk co-opts Freddie's act and his interviews to spread the word about the SS colonel. The dybbuk's voice will shock some readers; he speaks in embittered, Yiddish-inflected English that drives home his point. Here is Avrom Amos giving Freddie a history lesson: You didn't hear [that Hitler] told his Nazi meshuggeners, those lunatics, 'Soldiers of Germany, have some fun and go murder a million and a half Jewish kids? All ages! Babies, fine. Girls with ribbons in their hair, why not?' Fleischman inserts horrific factual details of Nazi brutality, and yet his message about bearing witness may be submerged beneath the sensational story line. Ages 9-14. (Sept.)

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School Library Journal : Starred Review. Gr 6–9—In 1948 Europe, former American bomber pilot Freddie Birch is making a precarious living as a ventriloquist when he encounters young Avrom Amos. The boy is a dybbuk, the spirit of a Jewish youth murdered by the Nazis. He was one of the resistance fighters who helped Freddie escape from a POW camp. The ghost has "unfinished business" with the SS colonel who killed him, and he needs a living body—Freddie's—to accomplish it. With Avrom's spirit sharing his space, The Great Freddie finds that his act improves. The dybbuk's snappy commentary is wildly popular with audiences, and the two begin to get bookings in fancier clubs. However, the spirit refuses to work on shabbes, and he insists that Freddie stand in for him at his bar mitzvah ceremony. Then Avrom begins to change the script, inserting information about his murder and the man who killed him. Since he is incorporeal, his character is revealed almost exclusively through dialogue—a remarkable juxtaposition of sharp, sometimes bitter humor with graphic descriptions of appalling wartime atrocities. Fleischman explores the sensitive topic of anti-Semitism—not just the overt evil of the Nazi system, but also the casual, pervasive bigotry of the period. Even Freddie has to deal with his own deep-seated prejudice. There is a strong emphasis on friendship and justice, and an ultimate affirmation of life and hope. This exciting and thought-provoking book belongs in every collection.—Elaine E. Knight, Lincoln Elementary Schools, IL

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