Will appeal to veteran and aspiring warriors, as well as conservative readers.
Grim account of combat tours in Iraq, where Marine and National Guard snipers made a crucial difference.
Retired USMC Gunnery Sgt. Coughlin (co-author: Time to Kill, 2013, etc.), who co-authored this book with prolific military writer Bruning (co-author: Level Zero Heroes, 2014, etc.), writes of his fellow snipers, “[b]eing called a murderer comes with the territory....we have been the most misunderstood and marginalized community in the American military.” Whether despite or because of this fearsome reputation, the author argues that snipers are the key to force protection and battlefield superiority in America’s recent conflicts: “[P]recision marksmanship can destroy a numerically superior foe’s will to fight.” The narrative focuses on several brutal Iraq War campaigns, including the initial race to Baghdad (in which Coughlin participated) and the 2005 siege of the city of Ramadi. The telling is fast-paced and violent, the tone often bitter: The authors seemingly view most Iraqis as ungrateful, cowardly collaborators (or in one disturbing encounter, vicious torturers) yet portray the Iraq campaign itself as a vital aspect of the global war on terror. They also castigate the military bureaucracy for its restrictive rules of engagement but revere the snipers themselves, capturing their camaraderie and self-reliance. Even in the sectarian bloodbath of Iraq, “they had the opportunity to do what we snipers do best. They located, closed with, and destroyed the enemy with long-range precision fire that minimized civilian casualties.” Beyond the realistic depictions of urban combat, the book’s strength is its in-depth discussion of the elite snipers’ weapons, training and tactics. The authors demystify this arcane military specialty, as when explaining why the snipers worked with spotters in combat: "There are so many factors that need to be kept track of for a long-range shot, you really need two brains working together to be most effective."
Will appeal to veteran and aspiring warriors, as well as conservative readers.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1250016553
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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 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
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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