A welcome addition to the literature of the Reagan era—and, for that matter, of political violence.
Procedural-like account of John Hinckley’s 1981 attack on President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan’s son Ron (see My Father at 100, 2011) has been making news with his revelation that the president began his sad decline by Alzheimer’s while still in office, but this account by Washington Post reporter Wilber depicts a Reagan, in office only a couple of months, at the top of his game. The author brings news to the table: For one thing, he writes, “the White House kept secret the fact that the president came very close to dying.” Even so, the public memory is of Reagan’s wakeful joking and his prompt recovery—for, only a few weeks later, he was back at work, now committed, as he wrote, to doing “whatever I could in the years God had given me to reduce the threat of nuclear war.” Wilber adds detail and nuance to the portrait of the would-be assassin, Hinckley, who was famously (or infamously) infatuated with the actress Jodie Foster and the film Taxi Driver. He was also indisputably mentally ill, a point that the recent shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson will drive home, even if, as Wilber notes in closing, Hinckley has increasingly been granted “more freedom in preparation for the day when he is eventually released.” Wilber’s minute-by-minute account of the assassination attempt has moments of tension worthy of Frederick Forsyth, but it’s also marred by patches of self-consciously noirish and clumsy writing (“getting shot by one was a bit like getting smashed with a sledgehammer, only worse”). Perhaps the best part of the book is the author’s portrait of the lead Secret Service agent and his colleagues at work, which adds dimension to the phrase “unsung heroes.”
A welcome addition to the literature of the Reagan era—and, for that matter, of political violence.Pub Date: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9346-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
