While researching another book, historian Schneller (A Quest for Glory: A Biography of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, not reviewed) discovered this never-before-published memoir of a young officer’s experience in the Union navy. Grattan was a young Brooklynite who served first in the army until1862, then was mustered out—probably for medical reasons—and enlisted in the navy in1863. Although his family origins are unclear, his writing and general literacy indicate that he was well educated and from a middle-class or higher background. Grattan was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading squadron and spent most of his naval career “under the blue pennant,” or serving on a flagship. The memoir he later wrote paints a unique portrait of life in the Union navy, offering fascinating glimpses of Federal blockading actions which aided (invaluably) the cause of Northern victory. Also of note is the depiction of relationships between the officers and men of the navy and their African-American stewards (serving in the only available role for blacks in the navy). Grattan’s writing is sharp and surprisingly unaffected by the flowery prose of typical Victorian memoirs; although it does wax repetitive, overall this is a surprisingly lively and modern read. The author’s profuse details show a side of the war effort that few readers could have imagined, such as dinners that would sound more believable on the Titanic than on any US naval vessel. His descriptions of combat are more than believable, though sometimes woodenly penned. Schneller’s foreword places Grattan in a context that illuminates the memoir. And his notes (fortunately incorporated into the text, not printed as endnotes) are informative and easily read by the nonhistorian. A welcome addition to our knowledge about the lives of men who served in the Civil War. (45 photos, 5 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: March 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-471-24043-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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
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