by Meron Benvenisti & translated by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2000
The former deputy mayor of Jerusalem addresses the transformation of an Arab land into a Jewish state from a novel perspective: geography. How, asks Benvenisti (Intimate Enemies, 1995; City of Stone, 1996), did the Arabic names of mountains, towns, and bodies of water get replaced with Hebrew words? How did Umm Jurfinat become Kibbutz Grofit, and Rakhma become Yerukham? And how has the physical and political geography of the Arabs been affected by the development of a state whose mandate is to provide a homeland for Jews? In many ways, the answers Benvenisti provides to these questions comprise a geography not just of Israel but of the author, the son of a leading Israeli geographer who created some of those early Hebrew maps. The geographer’s son here wrestles with the questions of how this now-Jewish state can be a true home to both Arabs and Jews, and what it means to understand that his —mortal enemies——the Arabs—are also his —brothers.— Benvenisti realizes that he cannot merely beat his breast and apologize for the wrongs Palestinians have suffered at the hands of Israelis. Though his —intention [is not] to address the issues of an overall solution to the refugee problem,— he does urge that Israel —abolish and eradicate any form of discrimination—legal or otherwise—against the Palestinians.— And he suggests that the state, which is selling to developers acres of land once owned by Arabs, compensate the original owners by paying them a portion of the profits. When peace finally comes to Israel, Benvenisti will be regarded as a moral and courageous thinker who spoke out on behalf of the oppressed before it became the fashionable thing to do. (23 b&w photos, 5 maps)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-520-21154-5
Page Count: 417
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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