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THE OPENING OF THE APARTHEID MIND

OPTIONS FOR THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA

From Canadian husband-and-wife sociologists Adam (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) and Moodley (University of British Columbia): a nonpartisan and nuanced look at the ``various competing forces'' now shaping post-apartheid South Africa. Adam and Moodley also coauthored South Africa without Apartheid (1986). Much of the analysis here attempts to address the stereotypes of both left and right that failed to explain the ``miracle'' that led to South Africa's current multiparty negotiations—or to account for the continuing violence. The authors note that neither the revolutionary nor the reformist agenda anticipated that the country would be transformed by these negotiations—negotiations ``that grant all major forces a stake in a historic compromise, by which each party stands to gain more than it would lose by continuing the confrontation.'' The result will probably be an ANC government working with a strong multiracial Nationalist Party to create broad-based policies. But such a compromise, Adam and Moodley warn, may well exacerbate South Africa's increasing divide along economic rather than racial lines as these two urban-based political parties control the spoils. The authors contend that it's this divide between the haves and the have-nots—between the urban areas and the rural—that's basically responsible for the current escalating violence. Tribal identity, they say, isn't as important as economic disparities, enormous unemployment among unskilled migrant workers, and the pervasive feeling among this group that their situation has deteriorated rather than improved with the ending of apartheid. Adam and Moodley analyze the various parties; the Communist agenda; the role of the unions; and the potential for disruption by either the far right or the left. As to the future, they're somewhat sanguine: A Yugoslavia or Lebanon type of scenario seems unlikely if the present cautious cooperation and ``remarkable pragmatic rationalism'' continue. For South Africa watchers: a timely, informative, and thoughtful appraisal.

Pub Date: July 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-520-08199-4

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Univ. of California

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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