A powerful reminder of the long-term devastating impact of war.
Bourret and Huynh, Vietnam War veterans on different sides of the conflict, share their stories in this nonfiction work.
As co-author Bourret, a United States Army veteran, was writing his memoir on his experiences in Vietnam, he was serendipitously introduced by a mutual friend to Huynh, a Viet Cong veteran living in Canada. What began as a few email exchanges evolved into this “double-memoir” pieced together by editor Huerta, who deftly alternates the perspectives of Bourret and Huynh chapter-by-chapter, tracking their parallel stories from the 1950s to the present. On the surface, the two men could not have been more different: Huynh’s story begins on the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, with bedtime stories told by his mother of how the French “ripped off our resources and how they enslaved our people.” Bourret’s early chapters take place in the American heartland of Nebraska and Wyoming, depicting the idyllic life of a baby boomer whose childhood centered around playing outdoors (“with war toys included”). As their lives converge in the 1960s around the conflict in Vietnam, similarities between the two young men become apparent in their narratives. Drafted in 1968, Bourret was buoyed by “a patriotic hype”; Huynh was similarly driven by an impassioned resolve to rid his nation of foreign interference. Yet, while Bourret would soon become alienated from the Cold War’s pro-war zeitgeist, and spends much of the book critiquing American foreign policy, Huynh maintains his belief in the nobility of the North Vietnamese cause. The book more than succeeds in its effort to tell “two sides of a complex story” through its parallel timeline structure, offering readers a poignant narrative that is accompanied by ample photos, maps, and original poetry. Even after fighting stopped, the effects of the war remained, as Bourret suffered from complications from exposure to Agent Orange and struggled to navigate Veterans Affairs bureaucracy, and Huynh fought to make ends meet in a Vietnamese economy wrecked by economic sanctions from the West.
A powerful reminder of the long-term devastating impact of war.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780996261029
Page Count: 286
Publisher: SurealWorks
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2023
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
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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