A tribute to some little-known heroes of our longest and most unpopular conflict. Sherwood (Officers in Flight Suits, not reviewed), a historian at the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., delves into the psyche of jet fighter-pilots (—fast movers—) and into the warrior virtues of bravery, bonding with comrades, risk-taking, and sacrifice for the unit. Combat offers a unique chance to test character, he argues, depicting his subjects as men with great motivation secure in the knowledge that their comrades would come their rescue even if they were shot down in enemy territory. These proud soldiers fought wherever and whenever they were ordered, even in a senseless war condemned by public opinion. Sherwod’s extensive research included interviews with 300 pilots and communications with hundreds more by phone or e-mail. Among the most memorable figures to emerge is Col. Robin Olds, —Old Lionheart,— a WWII ace whose feisty behavior and hell- raising with his men did not sit well with his —chair-borne— superiors. Olds’s innovative leadership, intelligence, courage, and skill earned him a reputation as the finest Air Wing Commander in Vietnam; he later became superintendent of the Air Force Academy. Scared air cadet Ed Rasimus evolved into a superb veteran who survived the toughest, most dangerous —100 missions North— while serving three tours in Vietnam. Other notable pilots and airmen whose adventures Sherwood recounts include Roger Sheets, John Nichols, Bob Lodge, and Steve Richie, who attacked the formidable Hanoi air defenses (SAM missiles and the latest MIG fighters, backed by some two billion dollars of Soviet materiel). Of the 801 Americans POEs taken during the war, 501 were airmen. A different view of Vietnam, candidly delving into the experiences of its air warriors, their joys, sorrows, achievements, and sacrifices during the worst of times.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-84784-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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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