A superb portrait of some of the realities of World War II and the increasingly destructive technology created during that...
Taylor (Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany, 2011, etc.) exposes one of the 20th century’s most savage military innovations, aerial bombing, in a well-researched, engaging book about a vicious Luftwaffe bombing in England at the beginning of World War II.
On the clear, moonlit night of Nov. 14, 1940, Luftwaffe bombers, armed with a new location system, began to drop incendiaries on the city of Coventry. The bombing continued with impunity until dawn, long after anti-aircraft defense ran out of ammunition. With almost nonexistent fighter defense, the bombing ended only when the Luftwaffe decided it was over. Britain had radar technology at the time, but their onboard radar didn’t work. The Nazi goal was to break England’s backbone of resistance, believing that “terror-bombing” the middle classes in the center of the defense industry would lead to negotiations to end the war. The author refutes the long-held belief that the government’s knowledge of plans for Coventry was withheld for secrecy. A downed German pilot’s overheard conversation provided some of the details, and England’s attempt to locate the origins of the radio waves and to jam their signals became the so-called “battle of the beams.” Unfortunately, the forewarning could only be a few hours, time only to create a panic. With sufficient personal stories to drive the horror home, Taylor proves Hitler right in thinking Coventry was the stronghold of the English. “The bombing of Coventry reveals…not just another city exposed to and devastated by new and ever more deadly military technology….Tradition-rich historic city and rapidly growing armaments-industry boom town in one,” writes the author, “Coventry represented quite a particular, and rare, place.” What Hitler didn’t understand was how they’d react: sadness, fear, regret, defiance, and stoic determination to carry on.
A superb portrait of some of the realities of World War II and the increasingly destructive technology created during that time.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63286-197-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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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