A striking and comprehensive account of a century-old institution.
Frank presents a painstakingly detailed history of Utah’s Wasatch Mountain Club, founded in 1920.
This passion project chronicles the long history of a Salt Lake City–based outdoor recreation club that, to this day, offers a wide range of activities, including skiing, climbing, mountain biking, and snowshoeing. The organization has a long history of involvement in mountain rescue missions, as well as the exploration of the region’s many caves. Members have long played a central role in preserving a number of natural spaces in the American West. Organized by activity, this book delves into relatively recent events as well as various developments from decades past. Very early on, in 1921, members of the Wasatch Mountain Club discovered Timpanogos Cave, which they persuaded the U.S. Forest Service to help preserve. This was the first of many conservation projects and cave explorations that members of the organization undertook. A few of the most incredible stories described in these pages include the ascent of Wyoming’s Grand Teton in 1967 by club member Ann McDonald, and when, in 1955, members led by snow ranger Monty Atwater conducted a rescue operation involving a B-25 bomber that crashed into Utah’s Mt. Timpanogos: “The rescuers knew better than to hope they’d find anyone alive—the question now was how difficult recovery would be.” Since 1972, club members have also participated in the grueling Kings Peak Ski Tour, described as "a one-day winter summit of Utah’s highest peak." More recently, in 2007, people from the club saved one of their own who’d been struck by a boulder near Utah’s Hogum Fork.
In addition to the many superb tales of the great outdoors, the book serves as an institutional history, documenting the club’s growth from its origins as a small organization that brought together 13 outdoor enthusiasts to its development into a powerful and influential cultural institution in the region, boasting hundreds of members. The book includes a biographical directory of figures in the organization’s past and present, describing some of their specific achievements within the club. Overall, Frank’s work proves to be a labor of love in the best sense of the term. She documents the historical impact of the WMC in as thorough and thoughtful a manner as readers could imagine. It’s also a beautifully illustrated work, with plenty of archival color and black-and-white photos taken over the course of a century, which effectively tell a story on their own while still complementing the text. The book’s focus is intentionally hyper-specific, which may somewhat limit its broader appeal; because of its highly self-directed nature, the book may mean the most to members of the club itself and to readers who are already familiar with its history. At the same time, the narrative ably brings together stories of mountain adventures, camaraderie, and the spirit of volunteerism—a combination that will appeal to many readers with strong interests in outdoor recreation. Overall, it’s a generous, inclusive account of the group, and as comprehensive a chronicle as one could hope for.
A striking and comprehensive account of a century-old institution.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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