For fans of all things Southwestern—not quite as robust and thoughtful as Craig Childs’ House of Rain (2007) but a pleasure...
More travels in the Southwest of yore by outdoorsman/writer Roberts (Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration, 2013, etc.).
There’s a place in southern Utah, not far from the Grand Canyon and closer still to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Canyonlands, where, before 2002, the author had never been—unusual, since he’s scrambled up and down most of the rugged terrain in the Four Corners states over the last four decades or so. Interestingly, most of his “desert-rat cronies” hadn’t been there, either. More interestingly still, as he chronicles here, neither had many ancient people, save for a few outlier Kayenta Anasazi from down south who eventually “gave up on Kaiparowits…[and] returned to their homeland.” Roberts, a keen student of the region’s anthropology, takes time to wonder why, noting that in the last 15 years, interest has grown, with ever more sophistication in our understanding of the many ethnic and cultural groups that contributed to regional prehistory and their far-flung network of connections. Roberts also traveled nearby to the hidden lattice of canyons where vast numbers of Fremont Culture remains were recently formally cataloged, having been “protected by a single private owner” instead of the complex of laws surrounding what are called “cultural resources.” The author journeyed to places that have been overrun and ransacked by private collectors and protected, if sometimes too late, by the long arm of federal authority. Throughout, Roberts does two things: He stands on the land himself, affording armchair travelers a fine view of the place, and he scours vast stacks of scholarly literature to give us an up-to-date take on the minefield that is historical interpretation, with scholars coming just short of blows over angels-on-pinheads sorts of questions. Credit the author for including plenty of interesting photos, as well.
For fans of all things Southwestern—not quite as robust and thoughtful as Craig Childs’ House of Rain (2007) but a pleasure to read.Pub Date: May 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-24162-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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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