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THE ASTORS 1763-1992

LANDSCAPE WITH MILLIONAIRES

An absorbing if occasionally exculpatory chronicle of the moneyed Anglo-American clan whose founding father and scions made frequently problematic names for themselves on both sides of the Atlantic. Wilson (Rothschild, 1988, etc.) gained the cooperation of many living family members—and seems to have used his access to burnish the tarnished reputations of Astors from the contemporary era. While the author is at pains to put the best possible face, for example, on the second Viscount's role as host to the so-called Cliveden Set (a motley crew of intellectuals best remembered for supporting appeasement prior to WW II) and on his eldest son's involvement in the Profumo sex/espionage scandal, he's more judicious on the subject of their forebears. At the outset, Wilson traces John Jacob Astor's departure from Germany and his 1783 arrival in the US, where he amassed a fortune in the fur and China trades that he increased with shrewd investments in Manhattan real estate. Although John Jacob's descendants failed to surpass his accomplishments, many made their marks, and Wilson does a generally good job of tracking the dynasty's UK and US heirs as they pursued additional wealth, philanthropy, political causes, social status, or pleasure. Other notable members of the Astor line (by birth or marriage) include the American cousins who built several of Manhattan's landmark hotels (the Waldorf-Astoria, etc.); Caroline (of 400 fame); Nancy (the first woman elected to Parliament); Vincent (a one-time owner of Newsweek whose widow, Brooke, is still going strong); and influential publishers (of The Observer and The Times of London). Today, the house of Astor has by no means fallen, but Wilson leaves little doubt that the family's socioeconomic position isn't what it once was. A first-class version of a saga that bears retelling, though somewhat flawed by the author's transparent efforts to explain away the errancies of latter-day Astors. (Sixteen pages of illustrations, plus family trees dating back to 1620)

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1993

ISBN: 0-312-09744-1

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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 Yorker staff 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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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