Richly complex, if often painful.
Life in the Reich capital.
Buruma, professor at Bard College and author of Year Zero: A History of 1945 (2013), has a personal interest in the subject of his latest book: His father spent two years in Berlin, compelled to join 400,000 foreign factory workers, poorly fed and housed but paid a small salary. Buruma draws on an abundant source of material, including letters and diaries, enriching these with interviews with wartime eyewitnesses, now in their 90s. Berlin was never a hotbed of Nazi enthusiasm, and Buruma describes many Berliners, especially artists, professionals, and the aristocracy who held a low opinion of them. Hitler’s invasions of Poland and France were mostly considered good news in Berlin. Rationing was tedious, but for the war’s first two years, provided one wasn’t Jewish, it was possible to imagine that life in Berlin was normal. By the fall of 1942, with no sign of victory in Russia and Allied bombings increasing, the quality of life declined relentlessly—although suffering in Berlin never matched that inflicted on conquered people in Eastern Europe. Jews, of course, suffered a worse fate. The avalanche of the Nazis’ antisemitic abuse, poured out since 1933, persuaded most Germans that Jews were at least “a problem.” Half of Berlin’s 160,000 Jews had left by 1939. The remainder had been ejected from jobs, schools, and homes, crammed into slum ghettoes, and forbidden to buy clothes, vehicles, and even pets. Mass deportation began in 1941. Buruma describes heroic Berliners who sheltered Jews, despite the terrible danger, but heroism is rare, and most Germans, even sympathizers, refused. Fewer than 2,000 remained in 1945.
Richly complex, if often painful.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780593654347
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: today
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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