Uneven but engaging.
A fast-paced but disjointed debut about the 2002 coup against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
On April 11, 2002, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marched through the streets of Caracas in an attempt to coerce Chávez into resigning. Before they reached the presidential palace, gunmen opened fire on the demonstrators, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the downfall of Chávez, the abrupt fraying of the opposition and Chávez’s improbable resumption of the presidency only 72 hours later. Leaning heavily on interviews with participating social and political actors from both sides of the ideological spectrum, Nelson (Center for American and World Cultures/Miami Univ.) attempts to re-create the emotions and experiences of the three-day coup “through the eyes of the everyday Venezuelans who were there.” The author’s breakneck pace initially proves problematic. The introduction provides insufficient grounding not only in the origins and evolution of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution but also in the sociopolitical conditions that instigated the coup. Moreover, the clipped chapters in the opening section ricochet rapidly among a wide cast of characters without taking time to develop their stories. It is only after Chávez relinquished power that Nelson’s narrative finds its bearing. In particular, the author paints a vivid portrait of Chávez in exile. Whisked away to a naval base on the northern coast, Chávez ran through a gamut of conflicting emotions, defiantly refusing to resign but also breaking down into tears at one point. Meanwhile, the opposition, spearheaded by the business and labor sectors, was quickly unraveling. When Pedro Carmona, a wealthy businessman and the interim president, decided to dissolve the legislative and judicial branches and revoke the Constitution, many Venezuelans feared that the country’s elites would enact revenge on Chávez loyalists. The military and labor unions abandoned the transitional government, and shortly thereafter, a stunned Chávez was flown back to the city. In a final twist, Nelson demonstrates that the coup actually rejuvenated Chávez’s presidency, allowing him to portray the opposition as untrustworthy conspirators.
Uneven but engaging.Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-56858-418-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
