The experiences of a young officer with a famous Scottish regiment, the Black Watch, in France in 1915. Historian Richter (Ohio State Univ.) was allowed access to the Sotheby papers by Peter H. Liddle, historian and archivist of the Liddle Collection (University of Leeds, England), which contains thousands of documents relating to Britain's wars. Richter found the aristocratic Sotheby to be a keen observer, imbued with the British public school spirit; at the front, his life was often put at risk as he cheerfully fulfilled his orders, leading men under the most trying and shocking of conditions. A devoted son of distinguished military forebears, proud of his country and of his beloved Eton, he started his detailed diary in December 1914. Sotheby maintained an unconquerable spirit despite extreme hardships, and despite having witnessed the deaths and maiming of hundreds of his comrades during artillery duels and assaults over muddy, rain-soaked terrain on the northern flank of the Western Front. His writings reflect the rather narrow and prejudiced viewpoint of his class and time. He had a servant who was held to strict standards and could be sent back to the ranks if he didn't perform. A brief romantic encounter with a young French girl is only noted in passing. Sotheby had a strong premonition of death after several particularly narrow escapes, but he expressed until the end his deep sense of patriotism and his feeling that he was privileged to risk his life for his beloved king and country. He died in September 1915, at the age of 21, during the battle of Loos. A poignant reflection of the sacrificial idealism of another time, and of the tragedy and destruction of modern total war.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8214-1178-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Ohio Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
