A definitive account of a watershed moment in history.
Witnesses to horrific history tell their stories.
There are more than 100,000 still-living hibakusha—survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sheftall’s book recounts the survivor memories of Aug. 9, 1945, when the world’s first plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, three days after the world’s first atomic weapon was dropped on Hiroshima. The decision to drop a second bomb so soon after the first was to bluff the Japanese into believing that there were many more such weapons in the American arsenal, the author says, and that they would continue to fall until Japan surrendered unconditionally. The Japanese, until that point, had seemed “prepared to die en masse in a final decisive battle…rather than dishonor [the country] with surrender.” Both sides were in a “strategic standoff in which bluff and resolve were indistinguishable.” American forces ran a series of conventional bombings across Japan designed to break the Japanese resolve. The biggest of those hit Tokyo in March 1945, when 3,000 airmen dropped seven tons of bombs in an unprecedented nighttime low-altitude raid that destroyed 41 square kilometers of the city, killed 100,000, and left one million people homeless. Japanese leaders still did not surrender, setting the course of the war toward Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sheftall alternates stories of U.S. bombing preparations with vivid stories from Japanese survivors, notably Masako and Michiko, female workers in Mitsubishi ordnance plants. The book details the post-bombing meetings of the Japanese Supreme War Council that led to Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15. Sheftall writes of one teenager’s reaction to the war’s conclusion: “Sueko was overcome with a powerful mixture of regret and sadness over the defeat. She also felt—very much to her shame—relief that she was going to survive. As she began to bawl, her mother stroked her back, softly saying, ‘The war is over….Thank goodness.’”
A definitive account of a watershed moment in history.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9780593472286
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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