A well-done oral history from Santoli (Everything We Had, 1981), showing why our military was much more effective in the Persian Gulf than in Vietnam. Luminaries such as Colin Powell, Secretary of the Navy James Webb, and lesser-knowns reveal here how confidence, discipline, and integrity were restored to the military after the low of Vietnam and the even lower low of the immediate post-Vietnam era. Santoli (himself a vet first travels back to wartime Vietnam, then visits the morass of the ``Wilderness Years''—a ``bad trip'' through the mid- and late-70's that's marked by rampant racial unrest, lack of military leadership (during the war too many NCOs had been given direct commissions; in turn, young or incompetent older men were made into staff NCOs), cutbacks, and plain poor morale. President Carter undermined the Shah, but a positive evolved out of the hostage debacle as the American public regained its respect for national security. Then, in the early 80's, under Commandant Alfred Gray, the Marine Corps changed over to a revolutionary new battle doctrine. Grenada proved a turning point when, for the first time since before Vietnam, an American President gave the military a free hand—which gave Schwarzkopf and others confidence that carried over to Panama and Desert Storm. After hashing over the war against Iraq, Santoli's subjects discuss our military future, advocating using the armed forces to prevent the spread of regional ``brushfire'' wars, counterterrorism, and drug- and illegal weapons-dealing. Some contend that lessons learned from Vietnam and Desert Storm may not apply to crises like Bosnia. How will the military cope? By maintaining the best possible leadership at the top, says Secretary Webb. Required reading for anyone seeking a valid perspective on America's military over the past three decades. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-345-37498-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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