A top-notch survey of the vast dimensions of human greed. (11 b&w photos)
The bizarre tale of a Central American land swindle that rivals for implausibility those country song lyrics about “ocean-front property in Arizona.”
Yet folks in England and Scotland queued up, ponied up their pounds, and set sail for Poyais, a country that didn’t exist. Gregor MacGregor, creator of the swindle, rivals in undiluted chutzpah that fictional rogue Flashman, except there is little humor to be found in MacGregor’s cruel cupidity. British journalist Sinclair (The Pound: A Biography, 2000, not reviewed) explores this truly odd case with the imagination and diligence it requires, since MacGregor covered his tracks well with outrageous lies and bogus documents. Early in 1823, a ship from Scotland dropped anchor near the Mosquito Coast between Nicaragua and Honduras and began scanning the shore for signs of life. The vessel’s occupants expected to find a thriving settlement. After all, they had read the exciting literature about opportunities in Poyais and had left their shops and professional positions to profit in the New World. But these settlers found only unfriendly jungle, puzzled aboriginal people, and some English survivors from a group that had arrived a bit earlier who told them the grim news: It was all a lie. Before it was over, a couple of hundred unfortunates had died from yellow fever and malaria, while hundreds more were ruined financially. MacGregor spent only eight months incarcerated in France before being acquitted of his crimes. The author follows the swindler from his early failures in the British military to his creation of a false lineage and a false identity. MacGregor somehow managed to endear himself to the Venezuelans; he served in their army for a bit, and they later buried him with full military honors. Sinclair does a masterful job explaining the intricacies of the swindle, though the absence of maps is regrettable.
A top-notch survey of the vast dimensions of human greed. (11 b&w photos)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-306-81309-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
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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