Levin manages to tell the story clearly without provocative bias while pointing out how the entire world demonstrated their...
A page-turning history/true-crime story surrounding the myth of blood libel, the idea that “Jews commit ritual murder to obtain Christian blood” to use in Passover rites.
The fiction of blood libel can be traced precisely to Thomas of Monmouth, who first published the accusation in 1150. No matter how many bishops, popes and monarchs unreservedly rejected the accusation, it has managed to pop up with alarming regularity. The late 19th century was particularly virulent, with 79 cases alleging ritual murder in Eastern Europe. At that time, Russia maintained nearly 1,500 anti-Semitic statutes on their books. The 1911 case of Mendel Beilis, who was accused of the murder (and supposed blood libel) of teenager Andrei Yushchinsky, is a perfect fit for the talents of Emmy Award–winning Good Morning America writer and producer Levin. His easy narrative style makes the book read like a novel as he points out the absolute absurdity of the baseless accusation. His comprehensive research uncovered proof that just about every security official involved found no reason to charge the young factory worker. The obsessive anti-Semite Vladimir Golubev was the first to accuse Beilis, and his fellow right-wing groups took up his cry for blood and threats of pogroms. Those who felt most strongly that it was a Jewish plot were, unfortunately, those who had the most influence: Czar Nicholas II and the chief prosecutor for the Kiev Judicial Chamber, Grigory Chaplinsky. The primary witnesses for the prosecution were three alcoholic derelicts who were primed with vodka before their statements were taken. “The ordeal of Mendel Beilis stands as a cautionary reminder of the power and persistence of a murderous lie,” writes the author. “In the twenty-first century, the Blood Libel is still with us.”
Levin manages to tell the story clearly without provocative bias while pointing out how the entire world demonstrated their incredulity at the absurdity of the entire episode.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4299-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
HISTORY | MODERN | JEWISH | 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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