A sometimes-compelling but unbalanced set of essays that lacks topical and emotional cohesion.
A collection of narratives about the costs of conflict, inside and outside of war.
Seifer presents a varied collection of testimonies about survival, perseverance, and decision-making in the face of combat, conflict, and persecution. Following a brief introduction that identifies the overarching theme of the collection as “honesty of perspective,” contributor Deb Aubin describes gaining a better sense of her father’s World War II service through an examination of the documents and artifacts she inherited after his death. Noel Gurewitch recounts learning about how his father’s decision to disobey an order while serving in India during WWII is still remembered and honored by the University of Calcutta today. The Vietnam War is represented by a chapter from Nelson DeMille’s novel Up Country (2002), in which an American veteran returns to the site of the Battle of Khe Sanh with a former North Vietnamese officer. John D’Angelo discusses continuing efforts to expose the truth about American prisoners of war, describing the mystery surrounding the fate of serviceman Roger Dumas, declared missing in action during the Korean War. Autobiographical narratives comprise the bulk of the collection. Seifer’s father, Stanley, recounts his childhood in Toronto and his eventual entry into the U.S. Navy in 1943, and Seifer himself shares a selection of correspondence between his parents and their friends during the Second World War. Harry Adler describes in engaging detail his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Europe via Morocco and Portugal and his experiences as a private first class in the Civil Affairs Section of the Fifth Corps Headquarters, engaged in planning and participating in the D-Day invasion.
The standout works come from Ella Adler and Helena Mia Weinrauch. In their separate accounts, the two Holocaust survivors describe the brutality, hunger, and indignities of concentration camps in harrowing detail, including Auschwitz and Plaszow, as well as the casual cruelty and small acts of compassion they experienced from neighbors and strangers in the first months of Nazi occupation. With grace and empathy, both women describe struggling with a loss of faith in God and their fellow human beings, and reflect on the personal resilience and strength which contributed to their survival: “So, miracles, the warm memories of my family and above all, hope was my salvation.” Ella Adler’s and Weinrauch’s narratives, as well as the reminiscences of Henry Adler, deserve a wide readership. However, the other pieces in this collection fail to earn their places beside these detailed and moving memoirs. Some suffer from a lack of depth or context, and others feel jarringly out of place, including an article adapted by Seifer from a book about two doctors who advocated for the use of ozone therapy during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, and S.M.J. Alt’s narrative of judicial corruption in Ohio. Although the introduction prepares readers for alternative “war stories,” noting that not all conflict “happens on the battlefield,” these pieces are simply too far afield in scope, tone, and subject to sit comfortably alongside Adler’s and Weinrauch’s devastating Holocaust recollections.
A sometimes-compelling but unbalanced set of essays that lacks topical and emotional cohesion.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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