From a radiologist attached to both the Stanford Univ. School of Medicine and the Center for International Security and Arms Control—a provocative analysis of the constitutional problems presented by John Hinckley's March 30, 1981, attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Abrams relates the story of Hinckley's drift into homicidal madness, underscoring how easily an apparently ordinary middle- class citizen like Hinckley can develop into a potential assassin. But what the author finds even more alarming is the confused and inadequate response of Reagan Administration officials to the shooting and to the requirements of the 25th Amendment regarding transfer of presidential power (e.g., Secretary of State Alexander Haig's erroneous announcement that he was to act as President)—and how, in their zeal to project the image of a strong President, these officials may have compounded Reagan's medical condition by having him accept visitors prematurely. Indeed, Abrams suggests that Reagan's aides, for purely political reasons, may have endangered the national security by failing to take advantage of the mechanisms offered by the 25th Amendment. For dealing with future similar crises, the author offers policy suggestions that take into account situations ranging from assassination attempts to the President's undergoing anesthesia during an operation. He suggests upgrading the role of the White House physician and seeking a more proper balance between physician-patient confidentiality, on one hand, and the national interest, on the other. An articulate and insightful examination of a problem with unlimited downside potential. (Photographs, drawings—not seen.)
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1992
ISBN: 0-393-03042-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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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