hence.
A preposterous, controversial, infuriating, and disarming band of rogues and heroes—the Civil War newsmen—are
insightfully profiled by journalist Perry (Arrogant Armies, 1996), one of their latter-day own. Modern American journalism emerged from the Civil War: Perry makes it clear that, thanks to the telegraph and the importance placed on breaking news and scoops, the conflict was the first instant-news event. Peeling away the layers of prose and posturing, Perry draws upon his experience as a newspaperman to show—for better or worse—what made reporters tick. They were pompous and arrogant, highly inventive, they lied and cheated, they got the story wrong more often than they should have, and they drank too much: in short, "They did a lot of things reporters are still doing today." But they were also, Perry admits, worthy war correspondents—some of them even admirable. We are afforded fascinating glimpses of the news process from the inside, with both overviews (why James Gordon Bennett's Herald said what it did compared to Horace Greeley's Tribune) and intimate tales (correspondents filing thrilling reports of battles "witnessed" 200 miles behind the lines, the reporter who kept Grant from drinking himself to death, and how European correspondents covered the action). Perry is particularly taken with the work of Charles Carleton Coffin of the Boston Morning Journal and Whitelaw Reid of the Cincinnati Gazette. Reid he liked for his careful writing, penetrating details, and willingness to call officers on their errors; Coffin was a sharp, dramatic writer who "probably knew as much about making war as most of the generals." Both are represented here, as are a good dozen more, by excellent selections of their dispatches—all of which, despite their antiquated style, ring with urgency and dire circumstance. An utterly engaging exposition of the war correspondent's work—rotten to sublime—same as it ever was these 150 years
hence.Pub Date: April 14, 2000
ISBN: 0-471-32009-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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