A remarkable teach-by-example collection of interviews that shatters the popular myth, at least among practicing journalists, that the question-and-answer format is the telltale sign of a lazy writer. It doesn't take more than a few pages into journalist Dreifus's collection to see why she has risen to the rank of ``interviewer of choice'' for the venerable New York Times Sunday Magazine after cutting her teeth with publications such as Playboy (where she was a regular interviewer for over ten years), Premiere, Modern Maturity, and the Progressive (all the pieces here first appeared in these publications). Witty, gutsy, wily, Dreifus knows both how to get her man or woman and then how to lure them into revealing emotions and thoughts usually reserved for one's closest friends. Dreifus discusses the art behind good Q&As in her introduction, where she notes, among other points, the necessity of good preparation and the complicit seduction that must take place- -on the part of the interviewer and the interviewee—for things to really sizzle. The interviews themselves, in many cases expanded from the original, provide marvelous examples of her art in action. In the chapter called ``Saints,'' for instance, the Dalai Lama admits to dreaming about sex and to a fascination with tanks, warships, and German U-boats. In her interview with former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Dreifus compels Bhutto to defend her record on women's reforms. Others who alternately squirm and schmooze with Dreifus include actor Richard Dreyfuss, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John Shalikashvili, ACLU president Nadine Strossen, and gay congressman Barney Frank. Infinitely more than just a how-to for writers or journalist wannabes. Expertly written, these minidramas will rivet anyone interested in human nature and the intricacies of how people communicate. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 20, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-42-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
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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