by Aryeh Neier ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2012
A fact-filled, well-documented, pull-no-punches account by an insider.
From a noted activist, an authoritative history of the global human rights movement from the late 18th century to the present day, with emphasis on its development since the 1970s.
Neier (Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights, 2003, etc.), president of the Open Society Foundations and a founder and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has the credentials to tell the story of the movement's philosophical roots, its nature and strength and its goals, challenges, successes and failures. Of particular interest is his account of the policies and actions of the United States during the Cold War era and his analysis of the impact of terrorism on human rights in the past decade. In his view, the movement, which comprises thousands of organizations in many nations, has been and will continue to be a force in world affairs. The two largest and most influential organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, each receive individual chapters; others receive shorter profiles. Neier traces the development of international law, and he also question: What are rights, under what circumstances may they be temporarily abridged and what abridgements are permissible? He discusses the latter two in the context of the post-9/11 response to terrorism. Among the post-9/11 challenges has been terrorists' immunity to embarrassment, one of the movement's chief weapons, and the high priority placed by the United States on national security. This has led not only to such abuses of rights as prolonged detention without charges, coercive interrogation and torture, but also to justification by other nations of similar practices. In the final chapter, "Going Forward," Neier is cautiously optimistic about the ability of the international human rights movement to develop a comprehensive approach to terrorism and to meet such future challenges as China's support of repressive regimes, the problems posed by increasing migration of ethnic minorities to Western Europe and the protection of civilian populations in areas of armed conflict.
A fact-filled, well-documented, pull-no-punches account by an insider.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-691-13515-1
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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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
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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