Unflinching examination of the hidden costs of American-style war.
Powerful collaborative account of a Marine sniper’s journey through the wilderness of war’s toxicity.
This synthesis of combat memoir and environmental polemic follows an equally unorthodox structure, alternating chapters by co-authors Howe, an associate professor of history and environmental studies at Reed College, and Lemons, who “served four tours in Iraq and Kuwait and then came home and became seriously and mysteriously ill” following his 2009 honorable discharge. Howe argues, “Alexander Lemons’s wartime experience exposed him to a crazy cocktail of potentially toxic substances” and traumas. They first met in 2012, with Lemons’ path to graduate studies derailed by spiraling illness, then began working together on this project in 2018, refining an approach they term “historical anatomy.” Howe explains, “Together, we use Alex’s story to rethink the violence we associate with war” but also “include the slow violence of toxic exposures and lasting trauma.” From an athletics-focused Mormon background, Lemons reflects, “I enlisted because I grew up in a family of caretakers.” He believed in the sniper’s exacting standards: “In the logic of the Marine Corps, becoming a sniper was…the one combat job that keeps more Marines safer than any other.” His wartime vignettes are hypnotically brutal, as he attempts to unearth the invisible or intentionally overlooked environmental hazards, from burning trash pits to exposure to heavy metals and depleted uranium, omnipresent in modern warfare. Yet once discharged, Lemons faced a grueling 10-year odyssey through both the VA and integrated medicine to grapple with debilitating conditions brought on by these exposures, alongside PTSD. Their unusual approach can be unwieldy, but it’s engaging; as Howe concludes, “mitigating exposures for both Marines and civilians also requires new forms of strategic thinking about warfare itself.”
Unflinching examination of the hidden costs of American-style war.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781324066330
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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