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SANDY HOOK

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY AND THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH

Essential reading that shows the straight line that runs from Sandy Hook to Charlottesville and Jan. 6.

A sobering, even depressing book that speaks to the American addiction to conspiracy theories and outright lies.

New York Times writer Williamson has made her beat the prosecution of right-wing ideologues and the dismantling of their machineries of deception. Here, she excoriates Alex Jones, the online blowhard who, soon after a young man killed 20 first graders and six teachers at a Connecticut elementary school, declared the massacre a “false flag” exercise meant to provide the Obama administration the opportunity to attack the Second Amendment. Anyone who followed Jones at the time could have seen his harangues coming; what’s surprising about this account is how so many credentialed academics followed suit, lumping the Sandy Hook killings into a messy cycle of conspiracy theories involving the JFK assassination, 9/11, and other events. Millions of like-minded people who have the right to vote (and own guns) partake of such theories, fanned recently by Trump, the fomenter of a mendacious conspiracy theory that he rightfully won the 2020 presidential election. “From a decade’s distance,” writes Williamson, “Sandy Hook stands as a portent: a warning of the power of unquenchable viral lies to leap the firewalls of decency and tradition, to engulf accepted fact and established science, and to lap at the foundations of our democratic institutions.” Sandy Hook became part and parcel of the paranoiac style of American thought—or perhaps better, nonthought. It can be fought, and Williamson records how the battle was taken into the courtroom, where numerous conspiracy theorists paid for their lies with jury-ruled financial penalties, while Jones’ social media outlets were “deplatformed” and most of the errant academics lost their jobs. We won’t know the outcome of the actions against Jones until 2022, but the author makes it clear that the remedies to curb what Kellyanne Conway called “alternative facts” exist.

Essential reading that shows the straight line that runs from Sandy Hook to Charlottesville and Jan. 6.

Pub Date: March 8, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-5247-4657-5

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022

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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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ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

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