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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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