by Edward Robb Ellis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 1995
A sparkling if occasionally self-righteous whirlwind tour of our times, from the end of the Roaring '20s until today. Excerpted from his Guiness Book of Recordsworthy diary (more than 20 million words written over 67 years and counting), this is a true rarity: an eyewitness account of some of the major events and characters of the 20th century. Begun when Ellis (Echoes of Distant Thunder, 1974, etc.) was a high school student in Kewanee, Ill., his diary chronicles the struggles of a nation burgeoning into a world superpower as it follows the personal triumphs and failures of its author. From the beginning, Ellis expected great things of his diary. Early on he noted ecstatically, ``Well, I have accomplished my one great purposeto keep a diary one whole year without a single day missed! And if I can do that thing so faithfully for one year, surely I should be able to continue it the rest of my life.'' Ellis defied the odds by actually writing daily, only stopping briefly at the death of his beloved second wife, Ruthie, in 1965. From Kewanee (``Oh, when in hell am I going to get the hell out of this jerkwater town?'') Ellis went to college, became a reporter in New Orleans, Peoria, and finally New York City, served in the army, and along the way met personages great and small, including Harry Truman, who told Ellis in 1956 that he always slept well because ``anyone with a clear conscience sleeps well''; Irving Berlin, who played on his specially made piano (he could only compose in the key of F sharp) while Ellis sang along; and E.E. Cummings, who told Ellis that ``this business of lowercase for [his] signaturepeople just made it up.'' A front row seat for the show of a lifetime. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 4, 1995
ISBN: 1-56836-080-0
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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