Extraordinary, and likely to become a standard in courses devoted to the history of the Vietnam War.
A sprawling, vivid, and hard-to-put-down account of a mere two days in the fall of 1967, a time of two fierce battles: one in South Vietnam, the other in Wisconsin.
Washington Post reporter Maraniss (When Pride Still Mattered, 1999, etc.) probably wasn’t thinking of James Michener when he set this epic down to paper, but the project certainly has a Michener-esque feel, with its huge cast of characters acting out in the face of great historical forces beyond their control. Maraniss is the more engaging writer, though, and he does a superb job of relating dozens of interwoven but distinct stories in which the obscure and the famous meet. In the Cs alone, for instance, there are William Coleman, a commander; Joe Costello, a grenadier; and Doug Cron, a rifleman—but also activist and actor Peter Coyote, US attorney general Ramsey Clark and his assistant Warren Christopher, and current US Vice President Dick Cheney. The latter, by Maraniss’s account, was busy avoiding the draft at the University of Wisconsin on those bright October days, though he would go on to rattle more than a few sabers. Meanwhile, the real saber-wielders, led by the noted soldier Terry Allen Jr., were busily killing and being killed in a ferocious battle 45 miles northwest of Saigon; some, even as early as 1967, had lost spouses and friends to the antiwar movement, which was gathering strength at the Madison campus, battling such hated symbols of the war as the Dow Chemical company and Lyndon B. Johnson. “There was an emerging awareness,” writes Maraniss of the antiwar activists, “that everything that had been tried to stop the war to that point had failed,” and, now toughened by tear gas and nightsticks, they were ready for the fight they got on the streets of Madison. Off in Vietnam, for their part, the soldiers of the tough-as-nails Black Lions unit were finding a vicious fight of their own—and compromised in that struggle by the leaders, or so many of the surviving soldiers felt. Both battles wrought terrible scars that have still not healed, and Maraniss’s careful narrative shows just why that should be so.
Extraordinary, and likely to become a standard in courses devoted to the history of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-1780-2
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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