An expert account of an unedifying milestone at the dawn of the Cold War.
On the Yalta conference’s 75th anniversary, this insightful history recounts its enormous, if teeth-gnashing, accomplishments.
In her latest impressively researched volume, award-winning historian Preston (A Higher Form of Killing: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare, 2015, etc.) emphasizes that the goal of the 1945 meeting was to decide the fate of Germany and the Eastern European nations liberated from Nazi domination. The author astutely points out that while Franklin Roosevelt was not necessarily a deep thinker, he was a master in the rough-and-tumble arena of American politics. He arrived at Yalta confident that he could handle Stalin better than Churchill. Many readers may be unaware that Churchill, despite his charisma and heroism early in the war, was extremely conservative, even for his conservative party. He refused to consider social programs as long as the war continued, a fact that contributed to his defeat in the 1945 election. His fierce opposition to independence for British colonies irritated the Americans as well as many in his own party. Stalin insisted that Eastern Europe must provide a barrier—i.e., friendly governments—between the Soviet Union and Germany. Since his armies already occupied the area, there was little the war-weary Allies could do except extract a promise to hold free elections; he duly promised and, within months, reneged. Almost everyone, Preston included, agrees that the two leaders betrayed Eastern Europe at Yalta. She adds that both genuinely wanted a democratic postwar Europe, but this took a back seat to their national priorities. Roosevelt’s main priority was persuading Stalin to join the war against Japan, which was proving brutally difficult. Like his hero, Woodrow Wilson, he yearned to create an international organization to enforce world peace. Stalin agreed to both, but at a price. Churchill aimed to preserve British influence. Stalin had no objection and threw him a bone by agreeing not to support Greek communist insurgents.
An expert account of an unedifying milestone at the dawn of the Cold War.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4765-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
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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