Satisfying to information seekers, but disappointing to those in search of a good read.
A detailed history of a group of Protestant German pioneers in the Holy Land.
For readers unfamiliar with the German Temple Society, whose members emigrated from Germany to Palestine with the aim of creating the kingdom of God in the Holy Land, this book provides a wealth of information. It begins with the group’s roots in the German Lutheran Church in the 19th century and follows them through their early, difficult days in Palestine and into a thriving community based around agriculture before their eventual removal from Israel in the mid-1940s. Theirs is a story fraught with peril and hardship, whether combating outbreaks of malaria in the earliest days of the settlement or enduring forced internments during two world wars. It’s also a story of great success; the Templers started with virtually nothing and brought forth a thriving community, the architectural remnants of which can still be seen. So it is all the more disappointing that the book does so little to imbue this history of the Templers with the drama their tale so richly deserves. While the book reveals myriad details about the Templers’ existence—everything from municipal tax rates to the building of a bowling alley—these facts become difficult to assimilate with virtually no entry into the personal lives of individuals. Photographs and occasional excerpts from diaries and letters provide a rare relief from the otherwise pedantic recounting of such things as agricultural techniques and outlines of a typical school day. As a writer, Glenk (Shattered Dreams at Kilimanjaro, 2007) does not possess the flair of a novelist or journalist who might find a way to present all these facts through the lens of a more compelling narrative. It is the deft combination of fact and story that makes the reading of history a special favorite among lovers of nonfiction. And it is, unfortunately, the absence of story in this text that readers will find most lacking.
Satisfying to information seekers, but disappointing to those in search of a good read.Pub Date: June 30, 2006
ISBN: 978-1412035064
Page Count: 291
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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 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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