A remarkably absorbing work that requires close attention—and repays in full.
An enthralling book about how finding the truth of a city’s story means finding the truth of your own.
Bell, a British American art critic, has lived in Berlin long enough to feel “the undercurrents and the downward pull that seem inseparable from Berlin’s identity.” In this nuanced, layered narrative, she effectively describes that sensation, creating a complex hybrid of the past and present, framed by the history of the “aggravating and interfering” apartment where she lives—in a neighborhood that has been home to artists and Nazis, entrepreneurs and orphans. “I set myself the task,” she notes, “of writing a portrait of the city….The memory of a place does not lie flat on a straight line of time; it is syncretic and simultaneous, layered in thin sediments of event and passage, inhabitation and mood. Walking around Berlin, she has discovered constant reminders—some deliberate, some not—of the rise of the Reich, the arrival and devastation of the war, and the city’s Cold War division. At the same time, Bell examines the difficulties in her own life. This sense of jumping between themes could have resulted in a tangle of confusion, but the author skillfully weaves the narrative threads into an elegant tapestry. Everything she encounters in the city seems to evoke something else. There are connections between the political and the personal, the beautiful and the obscene, the freedom and the self-repression. Bell wonders if the unification of the two parts of Germany, with East Germany being written out of history by a triumphant West, was an unalloyed positive development for Berlin. She sees a city that has become a maze of aggressive architecture and a culture obsessed with housing costs and property speculation. The author ends with a gesture of ambivalence, with Bell deciding to leave her apartment for somewhere “more manageable and less temperamental.” It’s an odd but strangely fitting coda.
A remarkably absorbing work that requires close attention—and repays in full.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63542-344-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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