The Brothers

April 13, 2015
Journalist Gessen (Words Will Break Cement) tackles the making of a terrorist, tracing the lives and family history of the Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The study traces their roots through their mother Zubeidat's family in Dagestan and their father Anzor's in Kyrgyzstan, where Stalin exiled the Chechens after WWII. Anzor and Zubeidat moved briefly to Chechnya, where Dzhokhar was born in 1993; the family later fled Russian air raids and landed in Cambridge, Mass., in 2002. Piecing together various interviews with associates of the family, Gessen paints Tamerlan as "an exemplary child" "destined for greatness," rudderless and possibly radicalized by a 2012 visit to Dagestan; his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was the "sweet kid" turned "campus pot dealer." The bombing is the backdrop to a larger conversation on the lawless implications of the War on Terror, including terrorist-recruiting FBI sting operations that give credence to a compelling theory that Tamerlan was a recruit "gone rogue." The book is both meticulously researched and provocative, and Gessen asks courageous questions about the dark side of the justice system, providing a vital counternarrative to the account of the bombing given by mainstream media.

April 15, 2015
The bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon resulted in a deluge of media coverage, none of which offered a satisfying explanation of why it happened. This book attempts to find an answer. Russian-American journalist Gessen (Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, 2014, etc.) follows the Tsarnaev family on their unending quest for a stable life; a map in the front of the book details a dozen moves in less than 30 years. Uprooted repeatedly by war or lack of opportunity, the family remained in Cambridge for nearly a decade before things turned sour. After the bombings, with Tamerlan dead and Dzhokhar in prison, the treatment of local Chechens by law enforcement overwhelmingly echoed the treatment they fled at home. The sense that things were no better for them in the United States highlights the disillusionment that some would-be terrorists convert into hatred and, often, violence. The lockdown of an entire neighborhood while the manhunt took place struck many as a violation of civil liberties, but the war on terror offered a free pass to law enforcement, both to do whatever they wanted and to answer to very little in the aftermath. Gessen believes the brothers are guilty, but those who think the bombings were a setup by the FBI have ample material to build the case for conspiracy, so voluminous were the redactions and refusals to divulge information. Most chilling is the sheer normalcy of the brothers, one a small-time pot dealer who wasted time playing video games, the other a married father who was still very much an adolescent at heart. How could they do such a thing? Did they act alone or, as seems likely, have help building the explosives? There are no pat answers, but Gessen makes it eerily plain to see how simply an atrocity can manifest.

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June 15, 2015

Journalist Gessen (The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin) has an established record in writing about politics in today's Russia; her skill fulfills the promise of the book's subtitle. The author has created a fine narrative of the Tsarnaev family's American experience and the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Her strength consists in juxtaposing the demands of immigrant life in America with the harsh reality of the Tsarnaevs' background in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Gessen painstakingly relates the ties between these two worlds and the complex immigrant society so affected by the attack. The book's introductory "cast of characters" provides a vital list of those involved. However, not all questions are addressed. Gessen offers little about Dzhokhar's (Jafar's) judicial defense centering on his relation with the older and apparently more violent brother, Tamerlan. She finally examines various "conspiracy" theories arising from inconsistencies; for example, the death of the Chechen immigrant Ibragim Todashev during FBI interrogation and the drug-related murders of several Tsarnaev acquaintances in Waltham, MA. VERDICT Some readers may find Gessen's doubt that "radicalization" is a fundamental source of terrorism to be intriguing or absurd, yet her attention to detail remains convincing.--Zachary Irwin, Behrend Coll., Pennsylvania State Erie

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