by John Browne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 2014
Somewhat entertaining but lightweight stroll through some of the chemical underpinnings of the modern world.
Personal observations on how the use of seven elements has shaped human civilizations.
"Over the course of my forty-five years in business, including twelve as the leader of BP, I saw the very best and the very worst that the elements can do for humanity," observes former British Petroleum CEO Browne (Beyond Business: An Inspirational Memoir from a Visionary Leader, 2011) at the outset of this idiosyncratic survey. The author has selected seven elements he believes have been prime contributors to the building of the modern world: iron, carbon, gold, silver, uranium, titanium and silicon. Regarding each element, he reaches back to its use in the ancient world or more recent discovery and then examines the changes each has wrought throughout history. Any such selection will be arbitrary; for example, some may puzzle over his choice of titanium as one of the seven instead of copper, which gave us developments from the Bronze Age to telegraphy and telephony, passed over since “electrical engineering will have its fair share with silicon.” Browne makes cameo appearances throughout the book, generally in the course of rubbing elbows with the powerful, and the exposition is clearly shaped by his interests and experiences. Having spent a lifetime in the oil business, he has much to say about carbon as a fuel but never mentions plastics, and his collection of more than 100 glass (that is, silicon) elephants appears alongside the development of semiconductors. Such quirks aside, the topics the author chooses to cover, ranging from the use of coal in ancient China to the Bessemer converter and silver photography, unfold in thoughtful detail, and the ample footnotes accompanying the text are as diverting as they are helpful.
Somewhat entertaining but lightweight stroll through some of the chemical underpinnings of the modern world.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60598-540-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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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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