Best of all, the author—who has a solid body of fiction to his credit—is a consummate storyteller; not only does the book...
World War I was a time of vast changes, notably the development of aerial combat. Here’s a look at how it came to be.
Hamilton-Paterson (Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World, 2010, etc.) looks at the war from a mostly British perspective, noting how the ups and downs of the Royal Flying Corps were emblematic of the growing pains of military aviation. At first, military leaders saw the airplane as a mobile observation post, reporting enemy strongpoints and troop movements. But ground troops fired at the unwanted flying spies, and soon the men in the planes were shooting at each other. Barely two months after the armies mobilized, a French aviator downed a German plane, and the air war began in earnest. However, the dogfights were only the tip of the iceberg. The author shows how decisions made by politicians, the owners of aircraft factories, inventors, engineers, and the men who turned new recruits into fighter pilots affected the air war. Most of them were making it up as they went along; nobody knew much about flying, and their machines were incredibly primitive by today’s standards. Inevitably, though, some became expert at the deadly game: the first aces. Hamilton-Paterson gives the likes of “Red Baron” von Richthoven and his French and English rivals their due, but the less-familiar aspects of the air war fascinate him, as well: German bombing raids on London, the almost criminally lax training regimes, and the planes themselves. The account is enlivened by quotes from pilots’ journals and letters home. While the author focuses mainly on the British war effort, there are enough looks into other nations’ inaugural attempts to build an air force to round out the picture.
Best of all, the author—who has a solid body of fiction to his credit—is a consummate storyteller; not only does the book tell a fascinating story, it is nearly impossible to put down.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-158-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
