Another Hastings page-turner.
A new look at D-Day from perhaps the best possible source.
Of the five Normandy beaches assaulted on June 6, 1944, Americans read mostly about Omaha and Utah because that’s where Americans fought, so readers will enjoy this account of a beach code-named Sword—not only for new information but as another work by Hastings, a master of military history. He reminds readers that the landings constituted a stupendous feat of planning, logistics, training, and air and maritime organization in which the British, for the last time in the war, played the dominant part. British Field Marshal Montgomery commanded the ground forces during and after the invasion. Supreme Commander Eisenhower, as usual, ruled with a light hand. Once ashore, plans for what to do next were sketchy, and the advance stalled. Fortunately, Hastings saves this for the final pages, instead delivering a compelling account of the preparations and landing itself. Much occurred inland from the beach as a massive nighttime drop of paratrooper and glider-borne forces aimed to destroy bridges and slow German reinforcements. The author is at his best describing this combination of brilliant strategizing, heroism, and utter stupidity. Nighttime airborne operations require superb pilots; planners knew but ignored the fact that theirs would be the worst (essentially all pilot trainees yearn to fly fighters and bombers; those who don’t make the grade fly transports). Sure enough, many pilots seemed unnerved, and most casualties occurred during the flight out, but the minority of troops who landed near their target did well. Readers who expect a superb account of the action will not complain; nothing went as planned, but none of the errors, accidents, and incompetence were vital. Casualties were heavier than at Utah or Gold Beach but less heavy than at Omaha and Juno, and the Allies succeeded in their purpose and the Germans failed in theirs. Even granted the Allies’ huge superiority of means, the landings remain a supreme achievement.
Another Hastings page-turner.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781324117575
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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
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.
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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