A persuasive but painful solution for dealing with the mess in the Middle East.
A former supporter of the Iraq invasion, former National Security Council director for Gulf Affairs Pollack (The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, 2004, etc.) now admits it was a terrible idea. Yet America must not only remain involved in the Middle East, he declares, it must bring harmony to that volatile region.
Oil is our overwhelming interest in the area, the author states bluntly. Western economies are addicted to it, price increases provoke recessions (including the present one) and exhortations to reduce our dependence on foreign oil are mindless platitudes since it will be impossible for decades. Today’s Middle Eastern leaders work responsibly to keep the supply stable, he adds. Unfortunately, all are autocrats, and their seething populations hate them no less than they hate the United States. Pollack emphasizes that America’s greatest threat from the region is not terrorism or oil blackmail by current governments but revolutionary chaos that would disrupt oil supplies and skyrocket the price. Perhaps the most disturbing chapters describe Middle Eastern demographics. Despite oil wealth, most of the region’s people are desperately poor, getting poorer and reproducing more rapidly than those in sub-Saharan Africa. Corrupt political systems discourage reform. Entrepreneurship is virtually absent. Tiny Israel exports more manufactured goods than 20 Islamic nations from Morocco to Iran. Readers may or may not agree with Pollack’s remedies, but they will certainly wonder about their practicality. All mandate decades of involvement and no small expense as we patiently guide these countries toward democracy, the rule of law, free markets and honest government. Our leaders must behave like statesmen instead of politicians (i.e., be willing to share unpleasant news with the public), and our citizens must be willing to sacrifice short-term benefits for long-term gains. Alas, readers may conclude that none of the current presidential candidates shows evidence of such statesmanship and it’s doubtful the electorate would vote for any who did.
A persuasive but painful solution for dealing with the mess in the Middle East.Pub Date: July 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6548-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
