In a meticulous, exhaustive, yet highly readable account, Thomas has done for the Battle of the Wilderness what others have done for Gettysburg, Antietam, and other Civil War battles. Rhea, an attorney and Civil War buff, gives clear historical treatment to one of the major engagements of the Civil War, the first important battle directed by Ulysses S. Grant after his appointment as general-in-chief of the Federal army. In the tangled, thicketed Virginia forest region south of the Rapidan River, Grant's force of approximately 120,000 was opposed by 65,000 men under the command of Robert E. Lee. The Union push was to be the beginning of Grant's campaign to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital. Though his army outnumbered Lee's by almost two to one, Grant met with stiff resistance, and the dense woods made fighting almost impossible. In the end, after both sides suffered heavy casualties, the battle was indecisive. Rhea views the engagement in the context of the increasingly desperate Southern situation in mid-1864 as resources became ever more scarce. He also relates the story of an important, little-known precursor to the battle: a disastrous foray by Federal troops against entrenched Confederates at Morton's Ford on the Rapidan in February of the same year. His narrative brings to life not only Grant, Lee, and James Longstreet, but also lesser known figures like ``Brains'' Halleck (Grant's predecessor as commander) and Gen. John Sedgwick (who commanded the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry in the Wilderness and had previously, against his better judgment, commanded the attack at Morton's Ford). An extremely helpful appendix contains the complete order of battle for both sides. All future accounts of the battle will be measured against this work. Scholars and buffs alike will find the volume enthralling. (History Book Club main selection)
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8071-1873-7
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
