by James Tobin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2003
A meticulous account of the grinding, day-to-day advances and setbacks, but also infected with the sheer wonder of taking...
Kitty Hawk was just the beginning for the Wright brothers, explains NBCC Award–winner Tobin (Ernie Pyle’s War, 1997) in his history of their first flight and ensuing efforts to make flying practical and profitable.
For Wilbur Wright in 1899, human flight was “only a question of knowledge and skill as in all acrobatic feats.” However, as detailed in this bright-eyed narrative, that didn’t mean it was going to be easy. Nor did the Wright brothers have the field to themselves, writes Tobin. Alexander Graham Bell had a team working hard and with considerable success, albeit always in the wake of the Wrights’ continuing ability to build a better airplane. Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Pierpont Langley also had his eye on the prize (though his efforts resembled those of Icarus), and so did others around the globe. At stake was not just the accolade of being the first to stay aloft; the author makes it clear that flight’s potential monetary rewards were always part of the equation, especially for national governments interested in deploying aircraft as tools of warfare. Throughout the first half, Tobin concentrates on all the tinkering and design trials conducted by the various teams involved: Langley’s “aerodrome” and its ride off the rails of a raft and straight into the drink (photos of the event, included here, are deeply amusing), as well the Wrights’ numerous experiments with gliders before they attached an engine to a craft. Then came that wonderful 59-second, 852-foot flight, an astonishing act followed by the comedy of its reporting by journalists who, of course, got all the particulars wrong. The second half follows the work to perfect the machine and the tricky maneuverings to earn some financial reward for all the effort and expense.
A meticulous account of the grinding, day-to-day advances and setbacks, but also infected with the sheer wonder of taking wing. (Photos)Pub Date: April 14, 2003
ISBN: 0-684-85688-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2003
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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