Reviewing a new English translation of Jean Guehenno's "Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944," a professor at Yale, Alice Kaplan, asks, "Is there something about our own political climate that allows us finally to hear Guehenno's voice clearly?"
Professor Kaplan doesn't answer the question or even address it further, at all, in the review, leaving this reader, at least, puzzled about what in the world she is talking about. What, exactly, in modern American politics makes the story of France under Nazi occupation resonate? Who are the Nazis of today? Obama? The Tea Party? The Islamofascists? If a professor is going to make such an inflammatory suggestion, the least she can do is explain herself.
Federal campaign finance records show Professor Kaplan donated to President Obama's campaign in 2008 and again in 2012, and she also has written for the hard-left Nation. But a political aside in a book review ought to be comprehensible without forcing a reader to scramble for outside sources from which to draw inferences. The sentence stopped me cold in my tracks.