In this odd revisionist biography of Mussolini, Tokyo-based journalist and historian Hoyt (Now Hear This, 1993, etc. etc.) unconvincingly argues that the Fascist leader ``deserves a better rating than he has yet been given in the West.'' Elected prime minister after the 1922 ``March on Rome,'' Mussolini soon established Europe's first modern dictatorship. For years afterward—as Hoyt points out—he was respected throughout the world for the efficiency he brought to Italy. Hoyt cannot, however, argue away the brutality of Mussolini's regime or the ruthlessness of the man himself. Mussolini's Fascist ideology and militant Italian nationalism were, like the Socialism he embraced earlier in life, mere vehicles for the achievement of personal power. Hoyt documents Mussolini's adulterous behavior, which on at least one occasion interfered with affairs of state. Hoyt also traces Mussolini's failed attempts at entente with France and Britain, his fateful decisions to expand his empire in Africa, and his entry into WW II at the side of Adolf Hitler. Reverses in the war led to the 1943 fall of Mussolini's regime and his 1945 execution by Communist partisans. Hoyt tries to rehabilitate Mussolini, but makes several factual errors (for instance, he states that Neville Chamberlain was the son of Austen Chamberlain, and puts Somalia in North Africa) and too many startling conclusions (among other things, he flatly asserts that Hitler sincerely sought disarmament, and argues that non-secret elections in Fascist Italy were an accurate reflection of the will of the Italian people). Hoyt adds nothing to our knowledge of Mussolini and, though claiming to take a fresh look at Il Duce, seems only to confirm that he was a repugnant figure whose rule was a disaster for Italy.
Pub Date: March 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-59151-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1994
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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