A remarkable story about a war during which thousands followed Fadoyebo’s example and fought valiantly for, and with little...
One Nigerian soldier’s poignant history highlights the enormous and little-known contribution of West African troops in the British Army during World War II.
The colliding forces of racism, colonialism and nationalism came to play in the extraordinary journey of Isaac Fadoyebo (1925-2012), from the Yoruba village of Emure-Ile. In 1942, the young man enlisted in the Royal West African Frontier Force; he served in a medical unit in the depths of the Burmese jungle and managed to survive the war after his unit was decimated by Japanese attack in 1944. British author Phillips, a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera English, came across Fadoyebo’s obscure published account at London’s Imperial War Museum and recognized its significance as one of only a few from the point of view of the African participants. Why would a Nigerian youth enlist in the colonial army to fight a war that was anathema to himself and his enslaved people? With little desire to stay and work the family farm and not enough money for advanced schooling, Fadoyebo swallowed the recruiter’s propaganda pitch, which promised a rich return of British justice, pay and the prospect of a good job after the war. At the time, Nigeria was a “model” British protectorate, and the people were considered cheerful and dependable, with an “instinctive respect for position and authority.” As a medical orderly, Fadoyebo had to infiltrate the perilous Arakan mountain region to check the invading Japanese; he was gravely wounded in the leg after the attack and left for dead in the jungle. Thanks largely to the care of a kindly Muslim villager, Fadoyebo made it through, returning to his village a rare and triumphant survivor to face the next step in gaining his country’s independence from Britain.
A remarkable story about a war during which thousands followed Fadoyebo’s example and fought valiantly for, and with little recognition from, the British Empire.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78074-522-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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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