by John W. Dower ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2010
An unrelenting, incisive, masterly comparative study.
Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning historian Dower (Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, 1999, etc.) draws astute ironies between Pearl Harbor and 9/11 in terms of the overweening arrogance of military superpowers.
The author moves back and forth between these two definitive eras in history, providing a brilliant examination of the willful self-delusion and selective reasoning involved in the highest levels of decision making—from Japan’s spectacularly ill-advised bombing of Pearl Harbor to the Bush Administration’s bundling of “weapons of mass destruction” and Osama bin Laden as justification for invasion of Iraq. Dower is intensely interested in the language of war, specifically the “code” words that prime the propaganda pump—e.g., “infamy,” as used to ignite public opinion against the enemy by both presidents Roosevelt and Bush; “ground zero,” evoked after the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and then after 9/11, underscoring in both incidences the terrible momentum of modern weaponry and the deliberate targeting of noncombatants; and “occupying power,” a term that morphed from carrying a benevolent connotation in postwar Japan to the malevolent quagmire that ensued in Iraq. The author traces the “groupthink” mentality through the faulty, blinkered rationale by the Japanese warlords as well as the Islamists and the Americans. Most presciently, Dower looks at America’s creation of what the late Benazir Bhutto called a “Frankenstein’s monster” in the Middle East—the sanctimonious preaching of democracy and justice on one hand, and the practice of supporting tyrannical regimes and military intervention on the other. The myth of American innocence and victimization (“Pearl Harbor,” “9/11”) is shattered by the baleful effects of terror bombing, torture (Abu Ghraib) and racism—what Dower calls a “profound failure of imagination” in thinking that the “little yellow men” and the “little Muslim sons-of-bitches” could execute such ingenious attacks.
An unrelenting, incisive, masterly comparative study.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-06150-5
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
Share your opinion of this book
More by John W. Dower
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
19
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.