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BEST OF ENEMIES

THE MEMOIRS OF BASSAM ABU-SHARIF AND UZI MAHNAIMI

Parallel chronicles of 30 years of history by an Israeli and a Palestinian. The star of this book is Bassam Abu-Sharif, famous first, in 1967, as the ``public face'' and recruiter for one of the most radical Palestinian factions and then, 20 years later, as the spokesman for the faction wanting to make peace with Israel. Mahnaimi is a former hard-line major in Israeli military intelligence turned journalist who broke Israeli taboos about reporting on the Palestinians, often with Abu-Sharif as his source. The book is structured as parallel memoirs, shifting from one man's story to the other, but the clear intent is to offer parallel stories of two peoples with diametrically opposed perceptions of the same events. Mahnaimi, for instance, describes Israel's euphoria after its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War; Abu-Sharif says, ``It was a year before I smiled again.'' Abu-Sharif tells why radical Palestinians like himself turned to ``strategic guerrilla action'' after the 1967 war; Mahnaimi describes how these actions by ``Arab terrorists'' inspired Israeli ``fear and loathing.'' Abu- Sharif describes his disfigurement in an Israeli assassination attempt; Mahnaimi assesses the Israeli thinking behind the attempt. Abu-Sharif was in besieged Beirut in 1982; Mahnaimi was among Israel's attacking troops. Abu-Sharif offers an insider's view of the workings of the PLO; Mahnaimi reveals the devious ways in which Israel recruits Arabs as spies. Abu-Sharif, whose political ambitions have been widely reported, may be accused of going easy on himself, particularly in his failure to describe his reactions to some of the more horrendous acts of terror perpetrated by Palestinian factions. But there is no doubting the fascination or the importance of the journey from opposite poles to a central meeting place taken by these two men. This rare, first-hand point-counterpoint to history is a must- read for anyone who would understand Israeli-Palestinian conflictand Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 1995

ISBN: 0-316-00401-4

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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