In a biography written to mark the 40th anniversary of Elizabeth II's accession to the throne, British journalist Keay tells you all you can want to know about the monarch without offering any illuminating insights of his own. Queen Elizabeth has been served by nine prime ministers (the first was Winston Churchill), has seen Britain decline in power, headed a Commonwealth made up of countries as far-flung and diverse as Nigeria and the Falkland Islands, and has had to cope with divorce and separations within her own, very visible, family. All this should make for a rich biography, but the queen is still the queen, and, with her advisors, closely guards her privacy—which means that Keay must rely on often unattributed gossip and old sources in telling Elizabeth's story. We do learn that the monarch is a bit of a tightwad; that she is pragmatic, has a dry sense of humor, does not forgive those who have offended her, and is not amused by the antics of her daughters-in-law. Elizabeth apparently cares tremendously about the Commonwealth, which ``she sees almost in sentimental terms as a family of nations which offers the rest of the world an example of informal unity,'' and she is considered to have influenced Margaret Thatcher to expedite independence for Zimbabwe. Elizabeth's long reign, Keay says, has given her an unequalled continuity of experience that she draws on in weekly meetings with the prime minister, whom legally she can only advise, encourage, and warn. It is unlikely, the author argues, that she will abdicate in favor of Prince Charles. Keay concludes that, despite some rocky times, the Royal Family is now as much a beloved national treasure as an invaluable institution of governance. More anecdotal than analytical, and written in less-than- sparkling prose: for hard-core royalty fans only. (Sixteen-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: June 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07776-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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
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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