Despite the obligatory optimistic coda, most readers of this lucid and enlightening yet discouraging insight into America’s...
Provocative analysis of why Americans love some wars and hate others.
Nearly everyone considers the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires, writes Tierney (Political Science/Swarthmore Coll.; FDR and the Spanish Civil War: Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America, 2007, etc.), yet both began with widespread support. This is predictable, he argues. The Founding Fathers proclaimed America the hope of the world, and since then we take for granted that all sensible people yearn for our freedom. This sense of mission carries over to wars which become righteous crusades such as the Civil War and two world wars. Crusades work against organized governments, but not where central authority is feeble, and we often take up “nation building”—fighting to establish a stable state, often against local opposition. With no Satan to vanquish (whether Hitler or Hussein), we lose patience, an attitude made worse by leaders—from McKinley to Bush II—who invariably declare that these newly liberated people are eager to love their neighbors and hold elections. Tierney points to the American efforts in Kosovo as a success. In fact, many interventions labeled fiascos (Lebanon, Somalia) saved thousands of lives. Our wildly mishandled quagmire in Iraq is winding down with modest success, and Afghanistan is more prosperous and free than in 2001 despite the growing feeling that honest government is a forlorn hope. Absence of anarchy and mass murder—not free elections—is a reasonable goal for nations with no tradition of good government; even this modest achievement requires more tolerance for frustration than most Americans possess.
Despite the obligatory optimistic coda, most readers of this lucid and enlightening yet discouraging insight into America’s impatience with nation building will not feel encouraged.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-04515-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
