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THE LONGEST LINE ON THE MAP

THE UNITED STATES, THE PAN-AMERICAN HIGHWAY, AND THE QUEST TO LINK THE AMERICAS

A fresh, well-documented account of U.S.–Latin American relations.

Drawing on archival sources and more than two dozen oral histories, Rutkow (History/Univ. of Central Florida; American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation, 2012) offers a richly detailed examination of efforts to build a highway from Alaska to the tip of Argentina.

Although there are many histories of the construction of the Panama Canal and the nation’s highway system, the author fills a gap by recounting the political visions, economic hopes, and engineering challenges that played out during nearly 100 years, beginning with the dream of an intercontinental railway. Among the champions of that dream was a former consul to Buenos Aires, the indefatigable Hinton Rowan Helper—one of many colorful characters in Rutkow’s well-populated narrative—who, in the mid-1800s, imagined an alternative to dangerous, unreliable sea travel: 10,000 miles of trains. In 1890, the Intercontinental Railway Commission was established, though with scant participation from Latin American countries. But by 1903, Mexico had begun construction, and small lines linked agricultural zones in Central America. Captains of industry—Carnegie and Gould among them—took notice: The north-south railroad, the Wall Street Journal reported, “has commended itself to the wisdom of many who have studied it on its economic, engineering, and financial sides.” World War I underscored the benefit of hemispheric connections when trade with European markets was impeded. With the expansion of the U.S. highway system, however, and the rise of a new “motoring generation” supplied by influential car manufacturers, the vision of a railroad transformed into a highway network that would foster “closer and more harmonious relations” between the nations of the Western world. After World War II, the road became seen as a “highway of freedom” to prevent the spread of communism in Latin America. Building a highway across difficult terrain proved both dangerous and expensive, but by 1963, the Pan-American highway opened—with the exception of one 400-mile gap of impenetrable jungle.

A fresh, well-documented account of U.S.–Latin American relations.

Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-0390-2

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018

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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.

Awards & Accolades

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
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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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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