If you’re taking bets on where the next war will break out, this is essential reading.
A look at the world’s flash points for conflict, whose number seems to be growing exponentially.
Andelman has long served as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and CBS News. He also studied at Harvard with the diplomatic historian Ernest R. May and the one-time master of intelligent realpolitik Henry Kissinger. Both taught him how nations have used—and should use—“lines in the sand” to indicate that beyond a certain point, no foe shall pass, physically or metaphorically. Those lines, themselves metaphorical, were once fairly distinct and relatively few. In Africa 30 years ago, writes the author, there were just two, one of which “surrounded Libya and Qaddafi’s pernicious regime” while the other marked off Chad as a warning against Libyan incursion. Now, he writes, at least 250 million Africans live along flash points such as the ones that divide northern from southern Nigeria and mark off areas contested by groups such as Boko Haram and that are closely monitored by U.S. drones operating out of neighboring Niger. The best of these thou-shalt-not-cross zones are “skillfully drawn and quite clear in their intentions.” The old Iron Curtain might serve as an example, except that the current president of Hungary, Trump ally Viktor Orbán, has ordered a $500 million containment fence built along the border with Serbia, “more high-tech, even more secure than the barrier the Soviets once built along their red line with the West.” Its message: If you’re not Hungarian, stay out. Its subtext: We don’t care that the rest of Europe is “fully united and barrier-free,” especially in a time when nationalist movements are rising in response to non-European immigrants who are, yes, crossing red lines of their own. Andelman’s points are sometimes too repetitively made, but the central truth holds: Everywhere around the world, people are digging in, and there’s a fight sure to come.
If you’re taking bets on where the next war will break out, this is essential reading.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64313-648-6
Page Count: 484
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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