Conroy adds personality and background to the official account of the crucial Casablanca Conference.
Despite a clash of egos and deep-seated differences, a crucial conclave mapped out a war-winning path.
Planning military strategy is an enormously difficult task; when several nations are involved, it becomes even more problematic. Conroy, the author of Lincoln’s White House, chronicles the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, when Churchill, Roosevelt, and their senior generals met to plan the next phase of World War II. The conflict was beginning to turn in favor of the Allies but was a long way from over, and there were serious divisions about how to proceed. A faction of the American delegation wanted to focus their attention on fighting the Japanese, while the British saw the Nazis as the principal enemy. There were also questions about when and how to launch an invasion of Europe and the likely postwar landscape. The French leaders, apparently more concerned with scoring political points than winning the war, were a constant irritant. Disagreements became heated and personal, but the delegation eventually hammered out a feasible plan. It involved the capture of Sicily to secure Mediterranean supply routes, an increase in the bombing campaign aimed at Germany, and a deferral of the invasion of Western Europe until more forces were gathered. While the British achieved most of what they wanted, it became clear that the U.S., as the critical source of manpower, materiel, and money, would henceforth be the dominant player of the Allies. The official minutes of the conference were published in 1973, but Conroy is a diligent researcher and finds some new material in participants’ diaries and correspondence, providing extra depth and color. Even though this is the first book-length analysis of the conference, the substance of the proceedings is already well known. For this reason, it will appeal mainly to aficionados of WWII history.
Conroy adds personality and background to the official account of the crucial Casablanca Conference.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781982168681
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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