Despite a little confusion regarding the movements of divisions and brigades, this is a fascinating, detailed, and...
In his first nonfiction book, acclaimed historical novelist Cornwell (The Empty Throne, 2015, etc.) employs his storytelling skills to bring military history out of the textbook.
The author writes of the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s loss (as opposed to the Duke of Wellington’s victory) in a readable account that only occasionally gets bogged down in tactics and the movements of brigades. Early on, he points out that we must understand the difference between infantry arrayed in either lines or columns since it made a considerable difference in the outcome of the battles fought on those June days in 1815. The Dutch and Germans combined with the British under Wellington; this was not a particularly pleasant circumstance, as Wellington had little faith in their ability or loyalty. He placed them carefully with his most effective fighters and did his best to keep Prince William of the Netherlands, or Slender Billy, from creating the disastrous confusion for which he was known. Two preliminary battles, at Ligny and Quatre-Bras, could have given France success, but miscommunication and outright dithering on the part of Napoleon’s commander Michel Ney enabled the opposing forces to fight on. Throughout the battle, there were many instances of generals making their own decisions that affected the outcome—perhaps none more than the Prussian Prince Blücher, who retreated to the north rather than west to maintain his ability to relieve Wellington, thus confounding Napoleon’s attempt to split the armies. The French were weakened in an attempt to take Wellington’s right flank at Hougoumont, where just over 2,000 Dutch, German, and English soldiers held off 9,000 French infantry.
Despite a little confusion regarding the movements of divisions and brigades, this is a fascinating, detailed, and generously illustrated description of the battle that changed the fate of 19th-century Europe.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-231205-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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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