A rarity in academic literature—a genuinely original book about a profoundly important topic.
A radically revisionist look at the race for the atomic bomb during World War II.
According to conventionally accepted history, the United States was the first country to invent an atomic bomb and, as a result, won the war against the Axis powers. However, author Hydrick argues that the U.S. government was actually unable to produce either enough enriched uranium or the trigger mechanism necessary for a fully functional device. Furthermore, he says, Hitler’s Germany did have enough bomb-grade uranium but ultimately made a calculated decision that it wasn’t in its best interest to use it, as it would have risked the equivalent of $2 billion on what was at best a Hail Mary pass. Instead, the author writes, Germany intended either to use the completed bomb as leverage in negotiations or to hand it off to Japan. The author asserts that one of Hitler’s most consequential advisers, Martin Bormann, did attempt to broker a deal with Japan but eventually secretly arranged to hand the materials over to the United States. In short, this book holds that America lost the arms race, and without Germany’s technological transfer, the consequence might have been a more powerful Soviet Union. In this third edition of his book, Hydrick addresses the criticism that if his account were true, there would have been massive amounts of unspent uranium left over, although none was ever found. But in fact, he says, 126,000 barrels have been discovered, further confirming his thesis. Hydrick’s theories are as provocative as they are meticulous; unlike other researchers who’ve focused on personal accounts and records in the National Archives, he combed through uranium production records, shipping paperwork, and metallurgical fabrication records that have largely been neglected by others. The ensuing account reads like a gripping drama, although sometimes the overall pace of the story is stymied by long, baroque sentences and a halting prose style. Still, this book marks a turning point in the history of atomic-bomb scholarship, and no future study can credibly ignore its compelling contentions.
A rarity in academic literature—a genuinely original book about a profoundly important topic.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63424-117-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Trine Day
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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