A British rejoinder and worthy complement to Rick Atkinson’s An Army at Dawn (2002).
Vigorous account of the war in the North African desert, in which, perhaps improbably, the Allies emerged victorious.
For the first two years of the conflict, Commonwealth and Free French forces fought against Rommel’s Afrika Korps alone. In almost every way, they were the lesser force. As British historian Holland (Fortress Malta, not reviewed) writes, the differences came mostly in military organization. German soldiers were trained, for instance, to act independently, and the lowliest private was expected to be able to take command as the situation required; British soldiers, by contrast, were required to wait for orders on high before taking action. Rommel’s forces were highly mobile and highly coordinated, while the British divisions tended to be unwieldy. And German arms, such as the 88mm cannon and the Mark IV tank, were superior to their British counterparts (“one looks solid, strong and formidable,” Holland writes, “the other lightweight and ineffective”). The American arrival in the African theater roughly coincided with a massive British reorganization of forces with an eye to solving institutional problems; the fall of Tobruk and the German threat to Cairo did much to overcome inertia, as old generals were sacked and new ones such as Bernard Montgomery came on board. At the same time, Sherman tanks and 105mm howitzers began to pour in, finally giving the Allied forces the wherewithal to meet Rommel on equivalent terms and, late in 1942, leading to victory at the Battle of El Alamein, when “Churchill had his victory at last” and the tide began to turn against the Axis. Holland’s narrative is leisurely and anecdotal, drawing on the memories of dozens of players, including the photographer Cecil Beaton and the journalist and author Alan Moorehead—who, contemporary correspondents might note, was openly critical of the biggest single British disadvantage: “Quick-decision men . . . it’s what we lacked most.”
A British rejoinder and worthy complement to Rick Atkinson’s An Army at Dawn (2002).Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2006
ISBN: 1-4013-5253-7
Page Count: 688
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
HISTORY | MILITARY | 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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