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THE PULITZER DIARIES

INSIDE AMERICA'S GREATEST PRIZE

Those with a truly intense interest in the administration of the Pulitzer Prizes might be able to find something mildly entertaining in this volume. The Pulitzer Prizes are more of an organizing theme than the actual subject of this book, which is essentially an autobiography. Hohenberg (The Pulitzer Prizes, 1974, etc.) was executive administrator of the prizes from 1954 to 1976, and he draws upon a personal diary from this time period to provide an account of his activities. The narrative is not limited to his Pulitzer work, however; the bulk of this volume is a recording of Hohenberg's wide-ranging professional activities and personal observations regarding major news events, notably conflict in postWW II China, the war in Vietnam and accompanying domestic discord, and the fall of Richard Nixon. Most of the commentary on the Pulitzers concerns the acrimony engendered within and by the Advisory Board whenever a jury's recommendations were not followed. No doubt this placed Hohenberg in an uncomfortable position as the man in the middle dealing with insulted jurors, disappointed nominees, and often a divided board, but this is hardly high drama for those not directly involved at the time. Controversial decisions deriving from the social conservatism of the board, undoubtedly the subject with the broadest potential interest, are warily noted without actually discussing them. For instance, the jury in 1960 recommended Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic for the drama award, but the board gave it to the musical Fiorello!; Hohenberg's sole commentary is, ``I was too stunned to say anything.'' This is a cautious account written by a devoted insider, not a titillating kiss-and-tell book. Adding to the tedium is a writing style that consists of dry, matter-of-fact prose interspersed with lengthy passages directly from Hohenberg's diary.

Pub Date: April 10, 1997

ISBN: 0-8156-0392-4

Page Count: 346

Publisher: Syracuse Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997

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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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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