Satisfying World War II history.
The latest addition to the abundant literature about the pivotal World War II naval battle.
Historians Simms and McGregor write that America’s vast industrial superiority guaranteed victory, but this was not apparent in the months after Pearl Harbor, when Japan’s forces annihilated nearly all opposition from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean. Delighted by this success but anxious to end the war, Japanese leaders decided to attack the U.S. base at Midway. While nearly all histories of the battle pay close attention to the actual fighting, the authors work hard to deliver new information. The first chapter is a biography of Ed Heinemann, designer of the Douglas Dauntless, the dive bomber responsible for the victory. The second concerns Adm. Chester Nimitz, who commanded the Navy in the Pacific and made the correct decisions. In the third chapter, Simms and McGregor explore the life of Norman Jack “Dusty” Kleiss, a pilot whose intense training prepared him for the day that would define his life. It’s no secret that the American fleet approached Midway with inferior numbers but better information thanks to the codebreakers who had learned Japanese plans. This became irrelevant once American reconnaissance detected the Japanese fleet and the U.S. carriers dispatched their strike force. Many squadrons never found the enemy, but several succeeded; within minutes, they sank three carriers and, later, a fourth. The authors emphasize the peerless contribution of the diver bombers. “In the after-action reports written by the task force commanders,” they write, “there was clarity that the battle had been decided neither by the high-level bombers nor by the torpedo bombers, but instead by the dive bombers”—especially the Douglas Dauntless, a superbly designed and sturdy but hardly cutting-edge weapon. Adding that it was paid for and built during peacetime, the authors conclude with a look at China, which now possesses the world’s largest navy, and they urge American leaders to pay attention to the underfunded, overstretched U.S. Navy.
Satisfying World War II history.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5417-0137-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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