Another winner from Mundy, who tells a story that deserves to be told about women who deserve to be remembered.
With painstaking research, an award-winning journalist reveals the crucial roles undertaken by women in the intelligence arena.
The Cold War and, later, the war on terror were conflicts fought in the shadows, a deadly game meant to prevent large-scale conflict. However, there was another battle conducted within the CIA: the struggle of women within the organization who had to fight sexism and discrimination to have their voices heard. Mundy covered related ground in her acclaimed 2017 book, Code Girls, but this book features a much larger canvas. The story spans seven decades, from the establishment of the CIA to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Many highly qualified women applied to serve in the fledgling CIA, but those who made it through the grueling selection process usually found themselves shunted into typing and filing jobs. There was a culture of toxic masculinity in the organization, and women were often seen as little more than objects. Nevertheless, some managed to work their ways into field operations. They proved to be remarkably good at the tradecraft of spying, but there was little recognition from superiors. At the same time, women were doing critical tasks in intelligence analysis, and this group stepped into a new role when the threat of terrorism emerged. It required interpreting scraps of information, from financial transactions to the movement of dangerous radicals. Few people in the senior echelons of the CIA, however, were interested in their reports on Islamic militants. After 9/11, there were attempts to elbow the women out of the picture, but they managed to continue their work, eventually tracking down bin Laden. Mundy is able to keep the sprawling narrative and huge cast on track, drawing on interviews and declassified records. The result is a vivid, compelling, and important book.
Another winner from Mundy, who tells a story that deserves to be told about women who deserve to be remembered.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780593238172
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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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