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THE DENG XIAOPING ERA

AN INQUIRY INTO THE FATE OF CHINESE SOCIALISM, 1978-1994

A case of life imitating stereotype, with Meisner (History/Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) expressing the hope that socialism in China may be rescued by a revolution against the Communist regime. There are two aims in this book: a ``historical narrative of post-Mao China'' and ``an extended commentary on the fate of socialism in late-twentieth century China.'' Much of the narrative is useful, including a good analysis of how Deng Xiaoping consolidated his power, how he maneuvered to isolate his anointed successor Zhao Ziyang, and Zhao's motives in opposing him at the time of the uprising in Tiananmen Square. As Meisner notes, Deng's commitment to socialism and democracy did not long survive his accession to power. He showed great finesse in wooing the youth and intelligentsia, and promptly forgot about them. The value of the analysis of socialism is something else. He points out that socialism, at least in its simplistic Stalinist rendering, ``meant little more than the nationalization of productive property.'' This notion, he justly observes, was not only appealing in its simplicity, but ``no threat to bureaucratic rule.'' But his own conception suggests a view of socialism that may never have been tried. Other bothersome aspects include an unskeptical treatment of statistics, the more surprising in a period when Soviet statistics have been revealed to be dramatically inaccurate. Most ``odd, or at best quixotic,'' to use his own description, is his apparent hope that ``something of socialism can be salvaged within the framework of the existing sociopolitical system,'' and that some kind of socialist revolution against the ``savage capitalism'' of the Communist government may do the trick. Further evidence perhaps that the most passionate defenders of old-fashioned ``socialism'' may still be found on American campuses.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-8090-7815-5

Page Count: 537

Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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 Yorker staff 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

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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