Fittingly, Vincent and Vladic close their enthralling, thrillerlike, meticulously researched book with the discovery of the...
A gripping study of the greatest sea disaster in the history of the U.S. Navy and its aftermath.
Launched in 1932, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis earned a distinguished record during World War II: eight battle stars awarded to its crew, a key role in the American victory at Iwo Jima, and its delivery of parts of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that would later destroy Hiroshima. However, as skillfully chronicled by Navy veteran and bestselling author Vincent (Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, 2010, etc.) and award-winning documentary filmmaker Vladic, the Indianapolis will forever be known for its sinking at the hands of torpedoes from a Japanese submarine on July 30, 1945. Nearly 900 of its 1,195 men perished, with the majority of them succumbing to exhaustion, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, drowning, or shark attack after the sinking. The survivors clung to life for four horrific days before their rescue. However, for Capt. Charles B. McVay III, the nightmare was just beginning. Naval authorities looking to cover up their incompetence railroaded him into a court-martial conviction for “hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag” even though, among other exculpatory evidence and testimony, the commander of the Japanese submarine testified that zigzagging would not have made a difference. A deluge of hate mail followed, and a broken McVay committed suicide in 1968, a revolver in one hand and a toy sailor in another. Due to the combined efforts of the surviving men who served under him, a 12-year-old student from Florida, and Sen. Bob Smith, Congress passed a 2000 resolution exonerating McVay for the loss of the Indianapolis. On Aug. 19, 2017, a search team funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen found the wreckage of the Indianapolis at a depth of approximately 18,000 feet in the North Philippine Sea.
Fittingly, Vincent and Vladic close their enthralling, thrillerlike, meticulously researched book with the discovery of the wreckage, bringing the 85-year-old saga of the Indianapolis to a close.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3594-1
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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