by Kevin O'Connell ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2015
A convincing analysis of Japan’s role in World War II and a reasonable argument for a logic process that led to the attack...
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A re-evaluation of the attack on Pearl Harbor in the context of Japanese regional and domestic politics.
In this debut history book, O’Connell takes a thorough look at Japan’s history and its role in geopolitics in an effort to understand the decisions that led to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The book begins by acknowledging that most World War II histories have considered the attack “preposterous” and counter to all reasonable military and diplomatic objectives. Before offering an unconventional analysis that gives a plausible explanation for the attack, O’Connell takes the reader on a deep dive into Japanese history, from the initial settlement of the islands through the feudal period, the development of relations with the West, and the development of the 20th-century militarist culture, and also places this history within a regional context shaped by Russian, Chinese, and European territorial goals. This Japan-centered approach allows the book to challenge standard interpretations, such as the idea that the country was isolated until the arrival of the U.S. Navy: “Japan was never closed; it simply never approved trade with any Westerners except for the Dutch.” O’Connell maintains that perspective as he links Japan’s military behavior to the evolving British colonial presence, the threat posed by the Soviet Union, and conflicts within the military and political structures, leading to a plausible portrayal of circumstances in which an overt attack on U.S. territory was a logical tactic. Although the prose occasionally gets carried away (“the early United States had Hamilton, Madison, Marshall, and the rest to figure out such things and Washington to reassure everyone, despite the persiflage and occasional violence some of those figures attracted, sometimes from one another”), the book’s arguments do not, and a detailed notes section provides a substantial base of evidence for the assumptions and inferences that underlie the work’s re-evaluation of the standard interpretations of World War II history.
A convincing analysis of Japan’s role in World War II and a reasonable argument for a logic process that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.Pub Date: July 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5004-5881-2
Page Count: 382
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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