A strongly written history of the early days of the American navy, as seen through the story of one of its legendary ships. Robotti (Chronicles of Old Salem) and Vescovi (managing editor of the Columbia Law School Report) begin at the birth of the American navy and quickly move on to the construction of the Essex. They create a broad, compelling portrait of maritime America by looking at the financing of the Essex in 1799 through public subscription, with especially large donations by the merchants whose interests the ship was built to protect. The details of their monetary contributions (or lack thereof in the case of at least one notable) bring to life the leading citizens of Salem, Mass., where the ship was built, as vividly as the humbler folk who physically assembled her. The authors deftly cover the political conflicts sparked by the Essex’s deployment in the campaigns against the Barbary pirates and the British in the War of 1812, as isolationists wishing to avoid a European war at any cost clashed with the merchants attempting to import or export goods. Such naval notables as Edward Preble, William Bainbridge, David Porter, and David Farragut all served on board the Essex, and their characters are colorfully rendered. But it’s when the frigate goes to war that the authors really shine, covering military actions in a style that makes actual battles as gripping as the fictional scenarios of Patrick O—Brian or C.S. Forester. The authors” habit of defining nearly every term may leave true naval history buffs feeling as if they have fallen into a primer on the subject, and there’s so much general information that the book’s title might be more accurate if its two elements were reversed, but these are minor flaws in a first-rate work. Naval history at its finest. (Maps, photos, and illustrations) (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 3, 1999
ISBN: 1-58062-112-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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 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
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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