Harrison deftly marshals the intricate details of battle, hardship and victory.
Versatile journalist and author Harrison (The Power of Business en Español: 7 Fundamental Keys to Unlocking the Potential of the Spanish-Language Hispanic Market, 2007, etc.) explores the moving microcosm of pride and patriotism within a Mexican-American Illinois railroad community.
A small, nondescript block of Silvis, Ill., gave more young men to fight and die in World War II and the Korean War than any other “similarly sized stretch” in the United States—22 families sent a total of 57 soldiers, eight of whom died. Harrison is a lively, thorough writer who has done his homework; he provides a well-researched account of the history of the town and its memorable personalities as they moved through the Depression, World War II and beyond. Fleeing the instability of their homeland during the decade of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the early immigrants to Silvis were lured by the promise of work in the burgeoning American railroad, where they were offered low-paid but mostly steady work. The Quad Cities was an important hub, and the Mexican families were allowed at first to live around the railroad yard, in abandoned boxcars, before moving to Second Street, where they built modest homes and a solid, self-sufficient community. Though bigotry was rampant, the community took up America’s sense of urgency after the attack on Pearl Harbor, answering the call for workers in the Rock Island Arsenal and young conscripts in the Army. Harrison follows the fates of soldiers, including the three Sandovals, one who toiled in Burma, the other in France, and the other in Tunisia and Sicily; Claro Soliz, who was launched into France as part of Operation Cobra; and Tony Pompa, who perished in the skies over the Alps. The Western Union man delivering his grim message would be a familiar sight on Second Street.
Harrison deftly marshals the intricate details of battle, hardship and victory.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-425-26253-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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