by Gordon Corrigan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 8, 2011
An opinionated survey by a British military historian takes in all theaters of World War II, especially the war in Asia.
“New histories” of World War II continue to proliferate, as world records are thrown open and theories revised, and concise, one-volume surveys are always welcome—e.g., see Andrew Roberts’ excellent The Storm of War (2011). Similarly, Corrigan (Blood, Sweat, and Arrogance, 2006, etc.) offers a superlative big picture, setting up the far-reaching economic ramifications of the crash of the American stock market in 1929, the Russian Revolution and the rush to modernize after World War I. In particular, the author masterfully presents the military buildup in Japan, the rise of extreme nationalism, emperor worship and Japanese sense of racial superiority as factors feeding the smoldering resentment against the Western powers that unleashed itself in horrific treatment of prisoners and civilians during the war. Corrigan comes down hard on the British Army (as opposed to the Air Force and Navy), which was no match for the tenacious, wily Germans. He tidily organizes his work chronologically by alternating spheres of action. Corrigan compares the unraveling struggle to previous wars, and he is succinct and unafraid to voice strong opinions, such as that the policy of saturation bombing undertaken by the British and Americans was necessary to bring the war to an end, despite the enormous civilian casualties. He posits the Russian recovery of the Madjanek camp in Poland in July 1944 as the moment “the full beastliness of the German racial policies was exposed.” Engaging reading down to the footnotes.
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-57709-4
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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