Engrossing reading that benefits from its simple format.
Life before, during and after Iraq, seen through the eyes of 30 soldiers deployed there.
Tripp (American History/Holyoke Community Coll.) interviewed men and women from various backgrounds, political persuasions and ethnicities, and after a brief introduction she lets her subjects do the talking. Divided into six sections, each entry focused on a different aspect of the conflict, the narratives contain cogent insights and frank disclosures that testify to Tripp’s skills as an interviewer. Allowing her subjects to vent their feelings on some of the key issues, she makes no judgment on the topics raised or the opinions offered. Soldiers hint at Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and cast doubts on the UN inspectors who found that Saddam Hussein possessed no such weapons. The issue of women in the military prompts many comments. Most of the men express reservations, and five female soldiers offer their distinctive takes: “I didn’t get along with many of the girls,” declares one, while another says quietly, “there are physical differences that need to be recognized.” Abu Ghraib and Jessica Lynch crop up often, and while no one interviewed here was directly involved in either incident, the soldiers have plenty to say about them. “It was people getting bored,” remarks one young recruit of Abu Ghraib. “I know it sounds awful but there’s a lot of people in the military who aren’t that smart.” Interviewees also provide interesting sidebars on the uses of modern technology in the war zone and the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The common thread that binds Tripp’s subjects, who range in age from teenage recruits to veterans in their 50s, is a feeling of pointlessness best summed up by Marine Corps Sergeant Arthur H.F. Schoenfeld: “[We] couldn’t believe they were actually going to send us to war over that.” The book builds to two profoundly moving final passages about a soldier killed in battle and another who committed suicide after his return home.
Engrossing reading that benefits from its simple format.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-56656-693-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Olive Branch/Interlink
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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 Yorkerstaff 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
