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NEIGHBORS, NOT FRIENDS

IRAQ AND IRAN AFTER THE GULF WARS

Necessary, if painstaking, reading for anyone interested in the contemporary history of two “rogue” states.

A blow-by-blow account of how two wars have affected the fortunes of two nations.

Drawing on myriad sources, from newspapers to interviews, Hiro (Desert Shield to Desert Storm, not reviewed) presents a good primer on contemporary Iraqi and Iranian history. Both Gulf Wars—the first (1980–88) between Iraq and Iran, the second (1991) between Iraq and a coalition of forces headed by the US—led to divergent consolidations of power. In Iraq, after both wars, Saddam Hussein tightened his control. In Iran, the first war solidified the Islamic revolution in giving the Iranian people a common enemy, while the second provided oxygen to a moderate movement that led to the election of current President Muhammad Khatami in 1997. The author devotes much time to Hussein’s takeover of the Baath party apparatus, his build-up of the Republican Guard, and his control of the intelligence and security services, which have enabled him to keep a thumb on his would-be challengers and US spies. He gives a pretty clear diagram of Iran’s numerous religious and non-religious government bodies (which are currently wrestling with each other over social and economic reforms), and documents how the US (under Presidents Bush and Clinton) sought to isolate both Iraq and Iran economically and diplomatically—despite significant differences between the police-state government of the former and the vibrant, partially democratic culture of the latter. He argues that Bush chose to leave Hussein in power so as not to allow Iran to profit from his demise, and that Clinton cynically bombed Iraq to halt impeachment proceedings then being raised against him in Congress. Unfortunately, Hiro never directly synthesizes this material, and his account is divided in half—with each country dealt with separately in its own section. Indeed, each section could have been its own historical monograph.

Necessary, if painstaking, reading for anyone interested in the contemporary history of two “rogue” states.

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2001

ISBN: 0-415-25412-4

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Routledge

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001

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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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