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Rockin' in the Round-Eye Lounge

A complex, potentially alienating writing style clouds this unique war memoir.

Deaton’s (The Death of Maria Chavarria, 2012) Vietnam memoir offers medical narratives amid the complexities of war.

In 1967, Deaton was at the end of his rope. He had a career and a family, but also an overpowering addiction to barbiturates. In light of his increasingly erratic impulses and worried about the destruction his downward spiral could wreak on the ones he loved, Deaton volunteered for the Vietnam War. The war would either cure or kill him, but he was so focused on the end results that he didn’t fully comprehend what was ahead. Deaton’s thoughts and perceptions were scattered by both pills and the action of the world around him, and while the narration supports this feeling, the style can be awkward for readers. Meaning gets muddled in shifts to the present tense and in overly verbose descriptions: “The building itself was smug. It was as smug as a jukebox on a Saturday night, as smug as an organ-grinder with twin monkeys, as smug as the villain in every plot of gothic dimensions.” Once Deaton arrives in Vietnam, the style seems more apt. Quitting his drug habit wasn’t the immediate, cold turkey affair he’d imagined, and his moods and heavy hangovers were just as much a problem as they were at home. He was still constantly tempted, both by substances and the women around him, despite his marriage vows. At the same time, he butted heads with other doctors and soldiers, his authority issues with matters of medical treatment creating conflict with the military rank and file. While many of his early cases make for mundane reading, the realities of war sweep in, threatening Deaton’s life more than once. Danger turns real, interpersonal conflict becomes collegial respect, and his addiction seems certain to be discovered. As patients’ stories fill up the sometimes-gruesome narrative, it’s seldom clear how Deaton’s tour of duty will turn out. Change, like war, was an inevitability.

A complex, potentially alienating writing style clouds this unique war memoir.

Pub Date: April 24, 2015

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 417

Publisher: Kindle Direct Publishing

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

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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BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

NOTES ON THE FIRST 150 YEARS IN AMERICA

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.

Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

Pub Date: July 8, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015

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