A poignant biography of Edwina Mountbatten, a woman known for her glamorous friends, glittering prizes, and attainments, but one apparently born too early to fulfill her considerable abilities. British writer Morgan is the author of Agatha Christie (1985). Granddaughter of one of the richest men in England, and related by marriage not only to the British royal family but to half the crowned heads of Europe, Edwina Mountbatten, nÇe Cassel, should have had the most sublime of lives—and in many ways she did. Married at 20 to Lord Louis Mountbatten, uncle of the duke of Edinburgh and a descendant of Queen Victoria, she was a close friend of royalty. Her grandfather's fortune enabled her to lead a life of conspicuous consumption: town and country houses; frequent and far-flung travel; the finest of clothes and jewelry. In 1947, she became the last vicereine of India, the real jewel in the imperial crown, as her husband negotiated Indian independence. But there was, of course, a darker side: Her mother, who died young, had neglected her; her father was affectionate but weak; her stepmother unkind; the life she was expected to lead too superficial; and the marriage to Louis a disappointment. World War II and India provided the first opportunities to use her extensive talents, which were widely recognized, but these experiences made her dissatisfied with her marriage and way of life. Only a close but platonic relationship with Nehru, who admired and respected her intelligence, gave any joy in the last years of her life. Parties, lovers, travels, and family history are all fully detailed here, but Mountbatten herself remains elusive, though Morgan does demonstrate how stifling and destructive high society was to these women doomed to be rich and idle despite their intelligence. More informative than analytical, then, but a good read nonetheless.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-684-19346-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
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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