A fascinating slice of history told through the daily lives of some of its iconic figures.
An intimate survey of a critical transition point in modern history.
Emmerson (1913: The Year Before the Great War, 2013, etc.) builds his history around a number of key personalities who shaped the era between 1917 and 1924, a time of betrayed idealism, social turmoil, and revolutions. Chief among them are Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, and Hitler, all of whom took their nations in directions that would eventually result in World War II. There are also plenty of interesting supporting players, including Kaiser Wilhelm, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Irish revolutionary Éamon de Valera, and Turkish liberator Kemal Ataturk; black nationalist Marcus Garvey and his rival W.E.B. Du Bois; scientists Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein; writers André Breton and Ernest Hemingway; singer and dancer Josephine Baker; and a host of others. The author tells the story by giving each of his characters a few paragraphs, then moving on to another, with the overall chronological narrative organized by the seasons of the year. This approach is especially valuable in giving readers a sense of the career arcs of significant historical figures along with a solid feel for the landscape of Europe 100 years ago. The focus is on Europe, although the United States is by no means neglected, especially in terms of racial tensions and the anti-Semitic writings of Henry Ford, whom Hitler admired and at one point hoped to win support from. Throughout this comprehensive history, there are few missteps. Emmerson does gloss over the sinking of the Lusitania, a key driver of American entry in the war, and he also uses nicknames for several major players—Lenin is “the impatient revolutionary,” Hitler “the mangy field-runner”—which he repeats constantly. Nonetheless, the author provides an illuminating picture of how the world moved from a “war to end all wars” to an era of dictators and toxic nationalism.
A fascinating slice of history told through the daily lives of some of its iconic figures.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-782-7
Page Count: 688
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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 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
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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