SOURCE: A review of Best Nightmare on Earth: A Life in Haiti, in Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 3, 1991, p. 6.

In the following positive review, Raksin lauds Gold's travel writing in Best Nightmare on Earth.

[In Best Nightmare on Earth: A Life in Haiti,] novelist Herbert Gold is driving through Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, when his car suddenly is blocked by a crowd joyously whirling, dancing and singing around a carnival band. The spontaneous celebration is business as usual on this island where “people fly like birds” and use voodoo to “send messages without wire or words.” But when Gold translates the lyrics, it becomes apparent that the song is as bitter as it is sweet: “There is no reason for people to go hungry, no reason for children to die, no reason even for young and happy lovers to die.”

Given their nation's history of poverty, corruption and...