An able exploration of one of the turning points in nuclear-arms awareness.
Nova staff writer and researcher Moran chronicles a largely forgotten Air Force disaster.
On Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 crashed during a routine mission over Spain, dispersing four nuclear warheads across the tomato fields and inciting two months of furor and panic before all the bombs were safely retrieved. Moran sifts through this shocking episode, bringing it to life with sprightly prose. During the “golden age” of the Strategic Air Command and the development of the Air Force, a continuous airborne alert was put in effect over Western skies, which stipulated that at least 12 bombers were kept in the air at all times, many probably carrying nuclear bombs. In this Cold War era, the ill-fated flight captained by Charles Wendorf carried four hydrogen bombs, each packing 1.45 megatons of explosive power (70 times that which leveled Hiroshima). The plane was to fly across the Atlantic and circle the Mediterranean, where it would refuel midair over Cuevas and Palomares with the help of a KC-135 Stratotanker, then return to base in North Carolina. However, while refueling, the planes collided and ignited. Moran investigates the military’s absurd scramble for recovery and spin control, the helpful discoveries by local fishermen and shepherds and the rather incredible insouciance over the spilling of plutonium on land and at sea. Displaying a solid grasp of U.S. military maneuvers, she also provides the fascinating story of the Navy’s experimental mini-submarine Alvin, which was used for recovery of the elusive fourth bomb.
An able exploration of one of the turning points in nuclear-arms awareness.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-89141-904-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Presidio/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
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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