Ask John le Carré or Graham Greene: This isn’t politics; this is what a war looks like when we’re not shooting at each...
Dear Robert Mueller: Follow the money.
This is just the latest in an unrelenting barrage of Trump books, ranging from Omarosa Manigault Newman’s feather-light but gossip-heavy Unhinged to Bob Woodward’s goose bumps–inducing Fear. For those who have been following the ongoing chaos, Washington Post national security reporter Miller’s (co-author: The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War Against al Qaeda, 2004) account of the first two years or so of the current administration may read like a greatest hits of America’s horror show at the hands of a leader unfit to confront the threat of Russian interference. For those who haven’t been paying attention, the book will serve as a damning indictment of not just the administration, but also a Congress that has been unwilling or unable to come to terms with trespasses that figures like former CIA director John Brennan have labeled “nothing short of treasonous.” Though the author doesn’t reveal a ton of explosive material, he does provide important context, particularly in terms of the roles of Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and FBI Director James Comey in the many exhausting episodes of national drama. There are sharp moments—e.g., Miller briefly confronting Kislyak in person or a White House adviser revealing advice to a deeply reluctant Trump about Russian sanctions: “If you veto it, they’ll override you…and then you’re fucked and you look like you’re weak.” Miller isn’t here to prove collusion, an unfair election, or even obstruction of justice, although there’s plenty of hard evidence for all of these charges. Instead, he offers dutiful journalistic work, pointing out all the evidence we’ve seen thus far, connecting the dots, and hypothesizing on exactly how the president of the United States may be compromised by a foreign power.
Ask John le Carré or Graham Greene: This isn’t politics; this is what a war looks like when we’re not shooting at each other. A solid entry in the sure-to-continue stream of books about Trump, Russia, and possible criminality in the highest office.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-280370-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Custom House/Morrow
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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