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AMERICAN WILL

THE FORGOTTEN CHOICES THAT CHANGED OUR REPUBLIC

Anyone following Jindal’s campaign will find nothing new, and much repeated, in this perfunctory book.

Louisiana governor and Republican presidential candidate Jindal shares the tenets of his presidential campaign.

The author sets out his positions in a passionate, angry polemic. With the assistance of former speechwriter for George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld Matt Latimer (Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor, 2009) and his partner in a literary agency/ghostwriting business, former Rumsfeld speechwriter Keith Urbahn, Jindal offers 10 chapters that focus on moments of crucial decision-making for the nation. The presidential election of 2016, he maintains, is just such a moment: when voters will decide whether or not the country will “continue down the path of bigger government, emboldened enemies, diminished liberties, and hostility to religious faith.” A committed conservative, Jindal is convinced of American exceptionalism, which God planned and liberals undermine. Among the visionaries who exemplify instructive values were the anti-federalists, who fought for a Bill of Rights that would temper the power of the federal government; and entrepreneur Edwin Drake, who “ushered in a world-wide energy revolution” by drilling for oil in Pennsylvania. Risk-takers like Drake, Jindal claims, would today be hampered by “environmental radicals and a compliant media” who raise questions about such issues as hydraulic fracturing. Only the free market, the author maintains, can “encourage technological innovation in renewables such as solar, wind, and hydropower.” The author spends most of the book attacking Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, government-mandated health care, and the current administration’s foreign policies, including the proposed nuclear deal with Iran. Although he claims that his own party needs to put forth solutions to domestic and global problems, he offers only general principles: smaller government, better schools, empowerment for “ordinary Americans,” a president who “does not apologize for American power,” and freedom for Christians to act on their religious beliefs.

Anyone following Jindal’s campaign will find nothing new, and much repeated, in this perfunctory book.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1707-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2015

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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.

Awards & Accolades

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  • Readers Vote
  • 724


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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller


  • National Book Award Finalist

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

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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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