In 1991, Fein, a documentary producer/screenwriter, traveled to the Southwest to research a TV series on contemporary American Indians. Here, in an honest, often wide-eyed account of the land and its diverse peoples, she chronicles her year of discovery. From an initial disappointment with her Indian cowriter, who professed to be too busy to work with her, to persistent difficulty in stifling an inquisitiveness considered offensive in the native Pueblo culture, Fein has her share of obstacles to overcome, but she and husband Paul quickly adjust to a world far from the self- promoting, gossipy one they left behind. Any invitation to visit with an Indian family invariably leads to others, with Fein's success in gaining acceptance acknowledged when she's invited to take part in an Apache puberty ceremony. Frequent trips to various Pueblos for Feast Days and less formal occasions give firsthand knowledge of contemporary Indian problems and achievements—an education enhanced by exploring ruins, petroglyph sites, and other evidence of the region's heritage. One excursion leads to an encounter with a Hispanic man guarding petroglyphs on his land; he agrees to sponsor a ``petroglyph party'' to bring together previously segregated native and Hispanic communities—an effort to reconcile differences and hostilities that have lasted for centuries. The process of uniting others enables Fein to better cope with her own fears, allowing her to return home fulfilled and with renewed purpose. Overly confessional and, at times, too focused on day-to-day details, but, still—with its appealing, steady warmth and sympathy for human foibles—a lively study of personal growth and cultural exchange.
Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-79576-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
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 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
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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