A fascinating postmortem of failed statesmanship in a fraught region—and a guarded plea for new ideas.
Hard lessons from decades of Middle East diplomacy.
Reflecting on their long-term efforts to reduce violence between Israelis and Palestinians, Agha, a scholar who has represented the latter in peace talks, and Malley, a veteran of the last three Democratic presidential administrations, pen a doleful epitaph for the so-called two-state solution. The authors started their careers hoping to help establish “a single entity in which Jews and Arabs would coexist as equals.” Eventually, they yielded to “what appeared at the time the more realistic and pragmatic objective”—a Palestinian state bordering Israel. But Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel—and Israel’s ongoing counterattacks in Gaza—have muted such ideas. The best the authors hope for today is that peace negotiators consider “a departure from convention,” one that would neither accept the current carnage nor impose one- or two-state compromises doomed to failure. They offer several alternatives. Among the most concrete are a truth and reconciliation process and the establishment of “a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation.” Such a link “has historical antecedents” and might help address an otherwise intractable dispute: “What Israelis would not hand over to a Palestinian state, they might grant a joint entity headed by Jordan.” While looking ahead, the authors offer a riveting insiders’ account of high-stakes statesmanship. Then–Secretary of State John Kerry brought unequaled “passion and enthusiasm” to the negotiations, but his work was for naught, in part because his boss—President Obama—didn’t leverage the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid that goes to Israel to forge lasting peace. Past Palestinian leaders were often chided for “never miss[ing] an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” but the authors, looking closely at peace talks since the 1990s, demonstrate that this is a major oversimplification.
A fascinating postmortem of failed statesmanship in a fraught region—and a guarded plea for new ideas.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780374617127
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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 2026 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.
