One of the few books on Cecil Rhodes that conveys the ``contemporary mind and contemporary methods'' of a man who, by 1896, at the age of 42, had gained control of the world's diamond supply, built a second fortune in gold, added two countries to Queen Victoria's empire, and became prime minister of the Cape Colony. The outlines of his spectacular career are well known: the sickly youth who went to South Africa for health reasons; understood the need to organize the chaotic diamond diggings; had his imagination fired by his travels to the north; used his wealth first to fool and then to conquer the Matabele; and is almost brought to ruin when he tries a similar coup against the Boers in the Transvaal. Thomas's account strikes a judicious balance between Rhodes's ruthlessness and amorality on the one hand, and his remarkable capacity to win people over to his side on the other. The same man acted to conceal the outbreak of smallpox at his mines and to strip black voters of their rights; and yet, when it was in his interests, he made all-out efforts to capture the non-white vote and, in perhaps the most sublime act of his career, went unarmed with a small party into the midst of the rebellious Matabele, who had killed large numbers of settlers, and persuaded them to make peace. Not the least of Thomas's achievements is to negate the (largely latter-day) suggestions that Rhodes was homosexual. The charge against Rhodes, Thomas believes, is that he ``squandered his great gift,'' his ability to ``reach out to others, whatever their race, sex or background, and inspire them with a great sense of purpose.'' This may go too far: The late 19th century was not notable for liberal conceptions of race relations. But if Thomas (whose Masterpiece Theatre version of Rhodes's life will air this fall) is not finally convincing in this judgment, he does manage to restore the relevance of a remarkable man.
Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-16982-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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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