An invaluable look into another nation’s response to terrorism.
France’s “trial of the century.”
On November 13, 2015, Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people and wounded nearly 500 others in shootings and suicide bombings across Paris. Nine of the militants were killed in the attacks on “V13”—Friday (vendredi) the 13th. The trial of 20 men accused of involvement in the attacks began in September 2021 and lasted nine months. There to write about it was journalist and novelist Carrère, author of 97,196 Words: Essays and The Adversary: A True Story of a Monstrous Deception. Carrère is no legal specialist, but he tells an engrossing story of justice à la française; the book originally appeared as columns in the French magazine L’Obs. Readers will quickly notice that French trials are different. Unlike America’s “adversarial” legal system, the “inquisitorial” French system lacks dramatic courtroom confrontations. Instead, defense and prosecution, with the active participation of the judge, examine the facts of a case. Perhaps most startling, the crime’s victims (and their lawyers) are present and participate. This allows Carrère to describe—perhaps at more length than some readers would prefer—horrific experiences of those who were caught in the attacks or who discovered that someone they loved had been killed. Except for one defendant (whose explosive belt may have been defective), the others varied from jihadist fellow travelers to associates who may or may not have been entirely innocent. Readers learn details of how the attacks were planned (very sloppily), how they were carried out (with much confusion), and how the police reacted (with incompetence before the attacks and overreaction afterward). Mostly, Carrère offers a penetrating account of how France dealt with a mass murder. The trial was grueling, but it was necessary. As public prosecutor Camille Hennetier says of the verdict in her closing remarks: “It will not heal the wounds, be they visible or invisible. It will not bring the dead back to life. But it can at least reassure the living that here law and justice have the last word.”
An invaluable look into another nation’s response to terrorism.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374615703
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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