by Bruce R. Kindig ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2014
A worthy addition to any Civil War bookshelf.
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The comprehensive regimental history of a Confederate artillery unit.
This scholarly debut by Kindig, a retired community college history professor, chronicles the soldiers, equipment, movements and battles of a light artillery unit from its spring-1861 formation in Memphis, Tennessee, by Capt. Smith P. Bankhead to its Dec. 9, 1863, disbandment following the South’s defeat at Missionary Ridge. Kindig draws his title from praise for the troops offered by commander William L. Scott in a five-page summary he penned in 1886, previously the only work to focus on the unit. Kindig spent 30 years tracking down records that Scott thought had been lost or never knew existed, and the result is an impressive historical re-creation. Readers find themselves on the ground and in the midst of battle as a result of Kindig’s intimate and uncanny familiarity with the daily movements and moods of these soldiers. He has pieced together minute details from hundreds of sources, including government records, personal letters, memoirs and scholarly texts, all of which are footnoted for easy reference. Fifteen appendices organize rosters, ranks, recruits, transfers and desertions. Although the narrative assumes a basic knowledge of Civil War history, any reader will grasp the rank-and-file’s reactions to repeated decisions by Gen. Braxton Bragg that turned tactical victories into strategic retreat as well as their struggling morale as material shortages worsened. Kindig’s affection for the characters he has so thoroughly studied is apparent, as is his respect for their commitment, if not their cause. Though he presents the conflict from their point of view, he maintains a scholarly rather than partisan tone. The only shortcomings are mediocre illustrations and scattered typos and editing miscues. Errant words, apparently orphaned when sentences were revised, occasionally mar what is otherwise clear, well-paced prose. Given the author’s extraordinary attention to detail in every battle, it’s a shame that location maps aren’t more legible and more numerous. Nevertheless, Kindig achieves his stated goal of telling “the stories of common men,” and aficionados of the genre will find a wealth of information and insight to enjoy.
A worthy addition to any Civil War bookshelf.Pub Date: July 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496918352
Page Count: 272
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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