A fascinating, informative tale related with powerful, intimate urgency.
Previously untold story of the historic St. George Reef Lighthouse.
Positioned six miles off the coast of Northern California, the rock formation that eventually bore the lighthouse was originally an underwater volcanic mountain. The remote, wave-swept and dangerous location was dubbed Dragon Rocks in 1792, and its submerged reef became known as St. George Reef, “in the hopes that the dragon might one day be slain.” After a series of fatal shipwrecks, including the disastrous 1865 loss of the gold-bearing steamer Brother Jonathan (subject of the author’s previous book, Treasure Ship, 2006), the United States Lighthouse Board in 1882 commissioned the engineering and construction of a lighthouse on St. George Reef, to be supervised by Alexander Ballantyne. The seasoned sailor had already built a lighthouse off the Oregon coast, but that was nothing compared to the risky challenge of the California project, painstakingly described by Powers in exacting detail. Hampered by cold winter rains and budgetary restrictions, the increasingly fatigued around-the-clock laborers finally interlocked into place the mega-tons of solid concrete and granite blocks in 1891. A year later, the tower’s French Fresnel lighthouse lens was illuminated. Keeping a crew of five lighthouse keepers on-site proved as challenging as the construction. The “wickies,” as they were known, endured harsh weather conditions, moisture-related illnesses, fires, explosions and earthquakes; average tenure was a mere three to six months. The lighthouse’s mettle was tested by a series of violent storms, including one in 1923 that ripped the engine house off its foundation. Deactivated in 1975, it has since been the focus of preservation efforts. Powers overstuffs his narrative with engaging lighthouse stories (some of them quite ghostly), worker/Coast Guard profiles and such odd tidbits as the fact that liquefied lard was one of the early fuels used. Historic photographs, maritime diaries, notes, reports and interviews round out this uniquely comprehensive, extensively researched maritime history.
A fascinating, informative tale related with powerful, intimate urgency.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8065-2842-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
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 2026 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.
