Military buffs who overlook the purple prose will enjoy a brisk, nuts-and-bolts description of air warfare in the...
Breezy, journalistic biography of America’s greatest World War I fighter ace—until a German ace shot him down six weeks before the armistice.
Frank Luke Jr. (1897–1918) grew up in turn-of-the-century Arizona; high school classmates in Phoenix noted his fondness for guns, horseplay and football. In 1917, the year America declared war on Germany, he enlisted in the fledgling Army Air Corps. Everything about this revolutionary new branch of warfare, including the aircraft, training and tactics, was improvised, unreliable and extremely dangerous; combat pilots had a life expectancy of three weeks. Novelist and military writer Pardoe (The Cruise of the Sea Eagle, 2005, etc.) recounts Luke’s training in the United States and France, summarizes America’s role in the war and provides short biographies of fellow pilots and commanders. In July 1918, the rookie pilot joined the 27th Squadron at the front, where his self-confidence, boastfulness and aggressiveness quickly made him unpopular with the squad’s veterans. They warmed up to Luke as his score of kills grew. By autumn, it had reached 18, and stories of his achievements began appearing in American newspapers, which extolled him as the “balloon buster.” (Destroying observation balloons was a very dangerous mission because balloons were heavily defended.) Within days of Luke’s death in September, fellow ace Eddie Rickenbacker had replaced him in the headlines, and Luke’s name eventually faded away to become the answer to a trivia question. Readers may wince at the author’s overheated writing style and penchant for describing his subjects’ inner feelings, but they will admire the research that turned up a generous trove of letters and diaries, enabling Pardoe to deliver a detailed picture of the not-very-introspective airman’s short life.
Military buffs who overlook the purple prose will enjoy a brisk, nuts-and-bolts description of air warfare in the murderously flimsy flying machines of 1918.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-60239-252-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
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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