Wrapped in well-researched history and presented in exemplary prose, this elegy of a lost time recalls the verse of Wilfred...
A small tale extracted from the annals of the “War to End All Wars,” by historical biographer Macintyre (The Napoleon of Crime, 1997, etc.), proves powerful and evocative.
As the guns of August 1914 echoed in Picardy, some British Tommies became separated from their units, the King's Own Lancasters, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and the Royal Hampshires. Left behind to be hidden by the townspeople of Villeret were four private soldiers, including the dashing Robert Digby. The gallant French villagers cared for “their Englishmen” for nearly two years under German occupation, which was frequently brutal. Eventually, the soldiers were hidden in plain sight disguised as peasants, and for a while the war seemed to forget them. Handsome Pvt. Digby and the prettiest girl in town became lovers and soon were the parents of a splendid baby girl. But as the Boche settled in, the gallantry of the people of Villeret was inevitably strained. The four servicemen were betrayed, captured, and executed. Finally, Villeret itself was obliterated. It's a simple story, but Macintyre reports it beautifully. In his hands, the tale of hidden warriors also serves as a portrait of the French countryside and its people during the Great War. Macintyre lucidly depicts the gossip, the cooperation, the courage, and the final treachery of Villeret and its inhabitants. In a coda, he ventures to identify the probable informant. He even offers, with scant evidence, an important reason for Digby's reluctance to attempt a return to his lines as soon as he might have. That singular reportorial leap, however, does not detract from the fundamental merits of a humane and enticing text.
Wrapped in well-researched history and presented in exemplary prose, this elegy of a lost time recalls the verse of Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke. (2 maps, 8 pages b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-12985-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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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