A practical introduction to the Korean War, particularly useful for readers interested in British military contributions to...
A history of the strategies, operations, and tactics of the Korean War, timed to coincide with that conflict’s 50th anniversary.
Fifty years after the outbreak of the war, publishers and television producers are inundating the public with accounts of the conflict. Standing apart from these opportunistic offerings is British historian Catchpole’s (Clash of Cultures, not reviewed) impressively researched new account. A career officer in the British army, Catchpole successfully combines his professional military insight and keen historical awareness to untangle the Korean War’s complex mix of modern warfare and Cold War politics. Many historians successfully describe the dramatic opening of the war by focusing on the initial lack of US combat readiness, General MacArthur’s brilliant amphibious landings at Inchon, the resultant UN offensive that almost drove the North Korean forces out of the country, and China’s entry into the conflict. As the war stabilized into entrenched mountain warfare and the UN commitment in Korea dramatically increased, however, these same historians often got lost in the conflict’s shift from military to political objectives. Catchpole avoids this pitfall in two ways: first, he incorporates new material from the recently opened Russian and Chinese archives into his book; and second, he includes several excellent chapters detailing British and Commonwealth service in the conflict. This new material transforms the traditionally messy narrative about the war’s end into a coherent story of international cooperation and bravery in the face of communist aggression. The result is a balanced and accessible history that sheds new light on a complicated war.
A practical introduction to the Korean War, particularly useful for readers interested in British military contributions to the conflict. (maps and diagrams throughout)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7867-0780-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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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