Mitchell is careful not to ruffle too many feathers in his analysis, but many readers will wonder if officials on either...
A former U.S. senator and diplomatic negotiator considers the history of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy over three-plus decades and what prospects for peace still exist.
Is a two-state solution still viable or a one-state undemocratic solution the grudging alternative? Mitchell (The Negotiator, 2015, etc.) is a revered, longtime peace negotiator and “special envoy” (in Northern Ireland and in Israel) and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1999), and his co-author, Sachar, is a high-level State Department official with years of experience with the Middle East. As a diplomat, Mitchell has good manners and does not attack either side, though he is realistic in his historical assessment while still representing the pro-Israel U.S. His analysis of peace negotiations begins with the founding of the state of Israel and the “special relationship” the U.S. engendered by President Harry Truman’s recognition of the founding “just eleven minutes after their 1948 declaration of independence.” The American arming of Israel during the Cold War has been key in its ability to resist attack by its Arab neighbors, who were often supported by the Soviet Union, yet the U.S. also sold arms to Arab states, such as Jordan. The U.S. has vociferously denounced Israel’s “unrealistic vision of greater Israel” and pushed for “land for peace” concessions, while in 2002, George W. Bush “became the first U.S. president to make the establishment of a viable Palestinian state an explicit foreign policy objective.” Mitchell tiptoes through the various (failed) peace negotiations, from Camp David to Madrid to Oslo to Annapolis, and the Israeli political turnover, which has greatly affected the prospects for peace. Moreover, the author is stern regarding the Palestinian National Authority leadership, the corruption under Yasser Arafat, and the strong-armed disarray under current president Mahmoud Abbas.
Mitchell is careful not to ruffle too many feathers in his analysis, but many readers will wonder if officials on either side will follow his proposals.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5391-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
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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