Not an untold story, but Henderson is a pro, so readers are in good hands.
Valor and sacrifice in the skies over Europe.
Hollywood loves the French resistance; military historians not so much, but journalist Henderson, author of Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War, has an eye for wartime derring-do. By the time the U.S. entered World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a far more hands-on leader than Franklin D. Roosevelt, was already an enthusiastic supporter of the resistance, which had begun slowly after the 1940 French defeat, expanded after Hitler’s June 1941 invasion of Russia, but received its greatest boost in 1943 when thousands of guerrilla bands (the Maquis) fled to the country to evade a law requiring all able-bodied Frenchmen to work in Germany. Throughout 1942 and 1943, Britain’s secret service flew planes over France, dropping supplies and agents. The U.S. was slow to get involved but late in 1943 began accepting volunteer crews from one of its largest bombers, the B-24, to undertake these dangerous, nighttime missions. From early 1944, individual planes would take off after dark, fly hundreds of miles, a task requiring superb navigation, and watch for a flashing light signal from the ground before dropping their load. By 1944, French resistance was organized and active in conducting intelligence and sabotage, tasks that peaked with the Normandy landings in June but continued until the war’s end. The author does not ignore the ongoing debate over whether this was an efficient use of Allied military resources, but mostly he describes the missions. There are biographies of individual fliers, French resisters, and agents dropped along with the supplies. A minority were women. Successful missions—60% to 70% succeeded—receive their due, but more pages describe those that weren’t, so there is a steady stream of mishaps, crashes, dramatic escapes, individual tragedies, and heroics.
Not an untold story, but Henderson is a pro, so readers are in good hands.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781668051412
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
SEEN & HEARD
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