Manifest destiny, the Chinese version.
China quarrels with the West but expands to the north.
Not everything north of China is Russia, writes historian Mann, author of The Great Wall: The Extraordinary Story of China’s Wonder of the World. Much of it is Mongolia. Beginning in the centuries before the common era, he recounts the history of China’s growth. Inevitably, this took place to the north and west, mostly by conquest, so this is essentially 300 pages of battles interspersed with the author’s visits to areas of historical interest, ruins, and passages describing China’s current policies. China itself did not get its act together without repeated centuries of infighting and then proceeded to enlarge its borders. Neighbors often found Chinese culture appealing and adopted it, and China itself was not shy about sharing its wealth in the form of bribery of pugnacious opponents. It also invested heavily in the well-known wall, which was effective if heavily manned. Mongols under Genghis Khan (1162-1227) conquered the largest empire in history, and his heirs ruled China until expelled by the Mings in 1368. He remains a figure worshipped, often literally, throughout Asia, and his relics (rarely authentic) are tourist attractions throughout China despite being ravaged in 1968 by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. An expansive Russia reached the Pacific in 1639, and the Mings and the succeeding dynasty, the Manchus (1644-1912), fended it off while working to reconquer Mongolia. Unconquered “outer” Mongolia took advantage of the Manchus’ 1912 collapse to declare independence but was scooped up in the Bolshevik Revolution to become a satellite, regaining independence after the 1990 Soviet collapse. Today China dominates its tiny economy (below Jamaica in size, a thousandth that of China). The 3.5 million Mongolians to the north have no interest in joining the 6 million already under Chinese rule, but this is a decision for China’s leaders to make.
Manifest destiny, the Chinese version.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781639369973
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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 2026 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.
