Intriguing stuff for fans of true spy tales and students of the Cold War alike.
High-flying history of the U-2 spy plane program and its unlikely clutch of fathers.
In this constantly surprising tale of espionage and under-the-table diplomacy, Bloomberg Businessweek contributor Reel (Between Man and Beast: A Tale of Exploration and Evolution, 2013, etc.) puts an unlikely figure at the center of events: photographic innovator Edwin Land, developer of, among many other things, the Polaroid camera. He code-named prototypes of that camera U-2, “an acknowledgment of his ‘other life,’ which was an open secret among the scientists inside the Polaroid labs.” That “other life” involved Land’s putting his talents at the disposal of the CIA, which put much more powerful versions of the camera in successive versions of its spy planes. Within the agency, the high-altitude U-2 was managed by a career employee who is best remembered today, a touch unfairly, as the architect of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. The U-2 was controversial: Dwight Eisenhower, the president at the project’s inception, insisted that it be under civilian control to keep espionage and warfare at arm’s length; even so, Eisenhower predicted that he would “catch hell” if one of them wound up in enemy territory. One of them did, famously, with Francis Gary Powers serving as living evidence—he was not supposed to live, but he did, while a Soviet pilot was killed by friendly fire during the incident—of capitalist perfidy. After much diplomatic wrangling, Powers was released; Reel notes that he chafed to reveal his side of the story but was ordered to keep silent, living out his few final years working as a helicopter-flying traffic reporter in Los Angeles. The U-2 program was not unsuccessful altogether, however. As Reel writes, it turned up evidence of the Soviet space program before Sputnik even launched, and the photographs it delivers can pinpoint a footprint in the Afghan snow, for which reason the spy plane is still in service today.
Intriguing stuff for fans of true spy tales and students of the Cold War alike.Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54020-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 Yorkerstaff 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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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