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TOURNAMENT OF SHADOWS

THE RACE FOR EMPIRE IN CENTRAL ASIA AND THE GREAT GAME

Swashbuckling tales from the history of European competition for control of Central Asia. Beginning in the 1820s, Great Britain and Czarist Russia became convinced that their fates lay in that vast and mainly unexplored expanse of land from Iran to China. From its colonial jewel in India, Great Britain feared Russia’s inexorable march through Central Asia to its colonial borders, Russia of course feared Great Britain’s inexorable march to its own borders, and both were driven by the Kiplingesque desire to bring “civilization” to a benighted people. And so, as one contemporary termed it, the “great game” was afoot, via war, espionage, adventure, and a cast of characters as bizarre as any Indiana Jones film could assemble. Journalist Meyer (The Plundered Past, 1973, etc.) and documentary filmmaker Blair Brysac denounce the game as foolish and in the end largely futile for either side, but they quite enjoy telling the tales of the men and women who played it: the British horse doctor who spent five years exploring Tibet, Afghanistan, and Bokhara; the mad Russian explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky; Madame Blavatsky, the Russian founder of Theosophy who played a mysterious role in the intrigues of Central Asia; Sven Hedlin, the Swedish explorer and Nazi favorite who lived for years in Tibet and fed the Fuhrer’s odd fascination with that land. Rogues, fools, mystics, and the occasional wise observer are all finely etched here. This is a cautionary tale as well, for as little as the great game profited Great Britain and imperial Russia (the authors avert their eyes from its effects on the peoples of Central Asia), it continued to be played by the United States and the Soviet Union with disastrous results—witness the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and unleashing of religious zealotry in the region with which the US must now contend. A ripping, timely, and perceptive yarn. (16 pages b&w photos)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999

ISBN: 1-58243-028-4

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Counterpoint

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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