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FROM SHIELD TO STORM

HIGH-TECH WEAPONS, MILITARY STRATEGY, AND COALITION WARFARE IN THE PERSIAN GULF

A savvy, slick, and comprehensive overview of the Gulf War, from the authors of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (1984). Dunnigan (coauthor, Shooting Blanks, p. 768, etc.) and Bay offer a wealth of fresh perspectives on the confrontation, commencing with an evenhanded evaluation of its ancient roots. Moving on to the casus belli, they review the industrial West's unwontedly cooperative response to Saddam Hussein's annexation of his tiny, oil-rich neighbor by force of arms. The stage thus set, the authors provide a perceptive audit of the logistics that put Saddam's occupation troops between Iraq and a hard place. They go on to deliver detailed briefings on the dramatic air and ground campaigns as well as background on how the two were integrated. Covered as well are largely overlooked naval operations that, among other fruitful outcomes, kept 17,000 Iraqi soldiers tied down awaiting an amphibious invasion that never came. Along their frequently sardonic way, Dunnigan and Bay furnish large amounts of statistical data on orders of battle, plus illuminating rundowns on how the equipment, weapons, and tactics employed by both sides helped determine victory or defeat. Once the Soviet-tutored Iraqis lost their centralized communications system to aerial attacks, the authors point out, they proved comparatively easy pickings for coalition forces that had greater firepower as well as superior sensors—and access to intelligence from American satellites. Dunnigan and Bay also make responsible estimates of unreported desertion and casualty rates—e.g., pegging Iraqi KIAs at no more than 35,000. Nor do they neglect the home front, recalling with evident relish lawmakers' less than prescient predictions in the debate preceding hostilities, and the often inane commentary of TV's talking heads. A down-to-earth wrap-up: fine fare for general readers as well as armchair strategists. (Charts, diagrams, line drawings, and maps—not seen.)

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 1992

ISBN: 0-688-11034-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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