Volume 43, Number 17 · October 31, 1996
Holy Warrior
By Tony Judt
His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time
by Carl Bernstein, by Marco Politi
Doubleday, 582 pp., $27.50
The glossy publicity material for His Holiness, a book being published simultaneously in eight countries and in excerpted form by Reader's Digest, contains a list of nineteen 'Possible Questions' for the authors. Designed for anticipated press conferences and interviews, these questions are anything but probing and do not suggest that the authors, both investigative journalists, hold their colleagues in high esteem. Nevertheless, such 'puff' questions are revealing in their way: more than half of them are invitations to the authors to boast of their discoveries, and they show that Bernstein and Politi (who writes for the Italian daily La Repubblica) mean their sub-title to be taken seriously. They do believe that they have brought to light the hidden history of our time.
Review, 5256 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |