A charged, eminently accessible history that speaks to a troubled present as well as to the past.
Portrait of a German city and its people, for better and certainly for worse.
“Weimar has long been Germany’s beacon of culture, but for a time, it was also its heart of darkness,” writes Hoyer, an East German–born historian. It was a place that Schiller and Goethe called home, a center of learning and the arts; it was also a place that Adolf Hitler enjoyed visiting, where he “could move around freely, even telling his staff not to clear restaurants or cafés he wanted to sit in.” While Weimar is well known as the seat of a post–World War I government with plenty of liberal and socialist representation, it was also the site of some the Nazis’ earliest electoral triumphs. And the Third Reich’s most extensive concentration camps, Buchenwald, was built on its outskirts—close enough to the city, Hoyer notes, that residents could not have helped but notice its existence and what went on there. Hoyer’s account complements Volker Ullrich’s Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic (2025), extending the chronology both forward and backward but also centering on the city’s people, some famous, some ordinary. Among the former, notoriously, was Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who misrepresented her late brother Friedrich’s work to align it with Nazism and curry favor from the regime for herself; in the latter category are a hotel keeper, a bookbinder, a shop owner—all part in some way of the city’s history, some victims, some victimizers. It was a Nazi stronghold from the earliest days, the home ground of senior officials such as Hitler Youth chief Baldur von Schirach and of ordinary Wehrmacht troops killed in battle and swallowed up in the Gulag following the Soviet occupation. Throughout, Hoyer’s narrative leads to a pointed lesson: The Weimar Republic, she writes, “is the most stark and terrifying example of a collapsed democracy in Western history.”
A charged, eminently accessible history that speaks to a troubled present as well as to the past.Pub Date: tomorrow
ISBN: 9781541605794
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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