A brisk, if slightly uneven, guide to some overlooked Caribbean structures.
A brief guide to the lighthouses of Puerto Rico from former educator Medina.
In English and Spanish text, the author takes readers to the “small island in the center of the Caribbean” to look at the lighthouses that can be found there. Some, like the Cape San Juan lighthouse in Fajardo, are still in operation; others, including a structure in Guanica that was deactivated in 1950, are mere ruins. Each receives a one-page description along with a color photograph; the images are provided by Badillo, Gonzales, Lopez, Brignoni, and Quinonez. The reader receives a short history, a note on whether the lighthouse is still in use, and whether it’s currently open to visitors. For instance, a lighthouse currently in use in Arecibo was originally constructed by the Spanish in the late 19th century, according to Medina, who writes that its light, which flashes every five seconds, has a “a focal plane of 120 feet”; visitors, she says, are welcome for a “minimal admission fee.” Five of the lighthouses mentioned are listed on Lighthouse Digest’s “Doomsday List,” she notes—meaning that they may not be around for long. The final pages offer a few additional places of interest for Puerto Rico visitors, such as the San Juan Museum and the Guanica Dry Forest. The book is well under 100 pages in length, making it an invitingly breezy way to learn about these intriguing structures. The text is straightforward and often feature helpful tips; for example, potential visitors to the Ponce Lighthouse on the island of Caja de Muerto are warned that the journey to the building itself “is difficult, in rough, rocky, and dusty terrain.” Although the historical information isn’t particularly in-depth, there are some surprises: One standout is the lighthouse found on Mona Island, aka “Galapagos of the Caribbean”; it’s the only lighthouse in Puerto Rico made of iron and steel, and, until recently, was “said to have been designed by Gustav[e] Eiffel.” However, the book doesn’t note who actually designed this lighthouse, which was discovered later, and readers will need to look to other sources for this information.
A brisk, if slightly uneven, guide to some overlooked Caribbean structures.Pub Date: March 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781964100227
Page Count: 66
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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