Strongly written with the stern clarity of senior historians, this is a spellbinding history: the reader will hear the whine...
A magisterial, hypnotically detailed tactical narrative of WWII, with the competing military, political, and social histories of the maelstrom writ large—yet comprehensibly presented.
Coauthors Murray (Senior Fellow/Institute for Defense Analysis) and Millett (Military History/Ohio State Univ.) spent decades on their research, and the result is an essential plurality of understanding that allows them to consider the military strategies (and underlying realities) of the various Allied and Axis nations. Intentionally or otherwise, this book occupies ground distinct from Stephen Ambrose’s popular books, in that they focus much less on the personalized experiences of the soldier and more on the significant strategies, decisions, and movements of governments and generals (and the corresponding actions of the many individual naval, combat, and bomber units, and sundry partisan and espionage triumphs) which, taken together, form the artificial patchwork of industrialized devastation we think of as “the war.” Surprisingly, this “globalized” perspective does not produce abstract or diffuse results, but allows the authors to present a nuanced panorama of scarce information and unique interpretations. Offering equal weight to both the European and Pacific theaters, and connecting the complex, sometimes counterproductive Allied campaigns and the Axis military actions and ideology with the weight of human tragedy and societal disruption fomented in the occupied nations (and especially the Eastern Front), Murray and Millet allow one to simultaneously understand a distant historical event as technological warfare and as the 20th century’s cruel pivot. Broad canvas notwithstanding, the authors wisely rely upon important (and often obscure) primary sources, including combatant and survivor recollections, to add thoughtprovoking dialogues to the survey. And their inclusion of political and social interpretation clarifies the mystery of whole peoples’ motivation towards a “total war” that demolished peoples and national entities.
Strongly written with the stern clarity of senior historians, this is a spellbinding history: the reader will hear the whine of the bombers and see the guttering lights of Europe, and find this rich assemblage of horror and destiny hard to set down.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-674-00163-X
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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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