While the narrative is initially slow, military history lovers will appreciate Snow’s explanations of how battles are...
A chronicle of 33 days in Saratoga, New York, in 1777 that turned the tide for the American Revolution.
Many books focusing on a single battle get bogged down in troop movements, rearrangements, and the positioning of multiple players. At first, this seems to be the case here, as archaeologist and ethnohistorian Snow (Archaeology of Native North America, 2009) explains the who’s who and what’s where of the battle(s) on the Hudson River. Thankfully, that is only the setup. As the action builds and the characters come into focus, readers will get caught up in their hopes and frustrations. Both sides had leaders who confused their staff, first ordering and then countermanding. Gen. John Burgoyne personified British hubris; he was sure they would whip the rebels and retire each night to a champagne dinner. Horatio Gates suffered from lack of support. Benedict Arnold, a loose cannon, was replaced, and John Stark’s militiamen’s terms of service were up, and they left. Snow compiles his meticulous military history from a wealth of information, including directives, letters, and private notes. The first battle, at Freeman’s Farm on Sept. 19, found both armies advancing and falling back 100 yards at a time, many times in and out. It was a technical victory for the British, as they still held their ground. However, the Americans had more troops—with more on the way—and they also had lethal riflemen whose marksmanship felled any who strayed too far from camp. After Freeman’s Farm, both sides delayed continuing the fight, Burgoyne in hopes of relief and the Americans facing the possibility of running out of ammunition. It would be Oct. 7 before the sides met again, by which time the Americans outnumbered and outgunned the British and had them surrounded.
While the narrative is initially slow, military history lovers will appreciate Snow’s explanations of how battles are fought, especially regarding supply lines, geography, and leading characters.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-19-061875-9
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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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