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GEORGE WASHINGTON'S SECRET SIX

THE SPY RING THAT SAVED THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

In a slim, quick-moving book, the authors bring attention to a group that exerted an enormous influence over events during...

A history of the Culper Spy Ring, without which, the authors argue, the Americans would not have won the Revolutionary War.

Nathan Hale was America’s first spy, and his execution forced Gen. George Washington to find a man who could develop a spy ring to help him drive the British from New York. Fox & Friends host Kilmeade (It's How You Play the Game: The Powerful Sports Moments that Taught Lasting Values to America's Finest, 2007, etc.) and Yaeger (Greatness: The 16 Characteristics of True Champions, 2011, etc.) were fortunate to have the research of Morton Pennypacker. He was Long Island’s premier historian and the man who, in 1929, identified the group’s most important member, Robert Townsend (1753–1838). Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge was Washington’s choice to develop his spy network, and the six spies he recruited had an immense effect on the outcome of the war. The first task was to invent pseudonyms, and they established codes and solid back stories, used dead drops and compartmentalized intelligence. The work they did in Manhattan and Long Island exposed not only a British attempt to destroy the American economy, but also Benedict Arnold’s treachery. In one of their final acts, they managed to get the British naval codebook, an act that turned the tide at the Battle of Yorktown. In the five-year period during which the ring operated, only one of their members was exposed. That she was a woman is the only clue to her identity, though there’s a suggestion that she hung her laundry in such a way as to pass information on troop movements. While Kilmeade and Yaeger don’t provide deep analysis, the narrative should please enthusiastic fans of the upheaval surrounding the founding of the United States.

In a slim, quick-moving book, the authors bring attention to a group that exerted an enormous influence over events during the Revolutionary War.

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-59523-103-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Sentinel

Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013

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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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  • 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 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

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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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