A highly detailed report of the rapid development of jet aircraft, which became the heart of US global power just as Britain’s sea power was in the 19th century and before. Rendall, an ex-RAF flier and television producer, shows that modern warfare has changed drastically with constant improvements in technology and the training of the highly specialized pilots. The only jets to see action near the end of WWII were the German ME 262 and the British Meteor. It was the US and the Soviets who perfected the most advanced jet fighters, the F-86 Sabre and the MiG-15, which faced each other during the Cold War. Rendall believes that UN air power stopped the attacking North Korean and Chinese armies in the Korean War. Rockets and space exploration intensified competition between the West and communist countries; the arms race became the space race and created improved nuclear weapons. In Vietnam the US Air Force, trained for long-range strategic nuclear bombing, was at a disadvantage against the tactical Soviet MiG fighters manned by WWII—veteran Soviet pilots. Avoiding the bombing of enemy airfields for fear of killing Soviet ground crews impeded US war efforts despite the heavy bombing of North Vietnam. Rendall argues that when you fight a war, you have to fight to win and not pull your punches. Air superiority requires the finest aircraft and pilots, as illustrated in the Mideast wars, when outnumbered Israelis defeated Arab countries. Learning from the mistakes of Vietnam, according to the author, the US-led Gulf War air offensive, with skilled pilots and top technology, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s large army and Soviet equipment while avoiding high casualties. A well-researched warning that the US and the West must have the best technology and trained personnel to survive in a partially hostile and competitive world in which US air power is once again being tested.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85780-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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