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BATTLE OF THE BISMARCK SEA

Here, McAulay (Where the Buffalo Fight, 1987 paperback), a retired Australian officer, presents an arresting account of one of the decisive naval battles of WW II, and, despite somewhat awkward narration, does a good job of analyzing the human and strategic factors underlying this crucial Allied victory. By March 1943, defeats at Midway and Guadalcanal had checked the progress of the Japanese Imperial Navy after its dizzying victories over American, British, and Dutch naval forces in the early stages of the war. Nonetheless, the presence of Japanese forces in New Guinea stubbornly continued to threaten Australia. In particular, despite some reverses in New Guinea, the Imperial Army continued to hold Lae, a strategic position on the coast of northeast New Guinea, and planned to deliver a formidable armed force to Lae by convoy. As a result of American intercepts of Japanese coded messages (and inspired guesswork by American general George Kenney and Australian commander ``Blackjack'' Walker), the Allied air forces—a motley band of Australians and Americans flying a makeshift collection of aircraft—were able to attack and destroy the convoy without major losses. McAulay's narrative is largely a description of this destruction, from the point of view of both Allied fliers and Japanese soldiers and sailors (the author's extensive use of Japanese diaries is fascinating and effective). However, while McAulay's account is informative and forthright, his prose style becomes turgid at times; and he fails to discuss adequately the strategic importance of the battle (which represented the final defeat of the Japanese military in its drive toward Australia). Nonetheless, the inherent drama of the story makes for compelling reading about an important and oft-neglected naval engagement. (Twenty-four pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1991

ISBN: 0-312-05820-9

Page Count: 256

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991

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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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