A well-researched treatment of two interesting figures in one of the most eventful times in world history. Though a bit...
John Quincy Adams spent several years as the American diplomatic representative in Russia, at the height of the Napoleonic wars. Here’s the story.
Cook (The Faith of American’s First Ladies, 2006, etc.) gives as much space to Louisa, Adams’ English-born wife, as to the future president. Adams, a compulsively honest and frugal man, was hard-pressed to keep up with the extravagant lifestyles expected of the diplomatic corps in St. Petersburg. The situation was complicated by the Napoleonic wars, in which American interests seemed distant and trivial to the European powers, especially England and France, both of which set up trade barriers against American merchants. Adams’ job was to work out an agreement with the Russians, giving the fledgling country at least one large trading partner in Europe. Luckily, Czar Alexander took a liking to the Adamses and helped smooth their way in the tricky maze of high Russian society. Adams’ ordeal included horrible traveling conditions, stubborn bureaucrats, a hostile French ambassador and a chronic shortage of money. But Louisa, one of the few diplomatic wives in Russia, had far worse to deal with—not just separation from their two young sons, but two miscarriages and the death of her 1-year-old daughter. Eventually, as the War of 1812 broke out, the czar offered his services to mediate between England and America, an offer declined by the British. Eventually, Adams was called to Ghent, where he helped negotiate the treaty that ended the war. Louisa, after a year waiting behind in Russia, undertook a harrowing journey to rejoin him in Paris. Cook, drawing on the journals of both the Adamses, gives a detailed if sometimes overwrought account of their experiences. Interestingly, the book is set in the same time and place as War and Peace and sheds considerable light on the background of that novel.
A well-researched treatment of two interesting figures in one of the most eventful times in world history. Though a bit plodding at first, it’s well worth sticking with it.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59555-541-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
