Based on years of interviews and research, Horwitz delivers a powerful, engrossing narrative that raises serious questions...
Living Planet Books co-founder Horwitz chronicles an ongoing collision of epic proportions between the U.S. Navy, intent on protecting its submarine warfare program, and environmental activists, who fight to save whales from extinction.
The author begins in March 2000, when, over several days, “the largest multispecies whale stranding ever recorded” occurred across 150 miles of beach in the Bahamas. Rescue efforts led by Ken Balcomb, a researcher who was conducting a census of whales in the area, were mostly unsuccessful, but he was able to preserve their bodies for later forensic examination. Having served as a naval sonar expert, Balcomb surmised that training exercises involving a top-secret “Sound Surveillance System,” developed during the Cold War to monitor Soviet nuclear submarines, were likely responsible. The use of high-decibel, low-frequency sonar signals by the Navy would have overwhelmed the whales' biosonar system and caused physiological damage as well. This was not the first such incident of whale strandings in the vicinity of naval exercises—nor, unfortunately, the last. The author reports on the battle led by Balcomb and Joel Reynolds—a senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council—to force the release of the forensic evidence and the attempts by the Navy’s top brass to stonewall any serious investigation that could lead to curtailment of their activities. The battle led to a court ruling against the Navy for overriding environmental law. The Bush administration overturned the court decision by executive order on grounds of national security, and the NRDC countered legally, asking for a ruling on the administration's action. The case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the administration was within its rights, but it opened the door for the requirement of “comprehensive Environmental Impact Statements” in advance of any future naval maneuvers.
Based on years of interviews and research, Horwitz delivers a powerful, engrossing narrative that raises serious questions about the unchecked use of secrecy by the military to advance its institutional power.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4501-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
HISTORY | NATURE | MILITARY | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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