Stay tuned for the third installment: a treatment of WWII (here the “Third Alliance War”).
In an alternative history sequel, King and Bredehoft (Democracy’s Missing Arsenal, 2013) chart the solidification of a Great Power Alliance and envision a subtly different 1914-18 war.
In the authors’ convincing semifictional world, everything stems from a single “point of divergence”: the Confederacy won the Civil War. Key consequences include earlier division into coalitions—France, America, and Russia versus Germany, England, and the Confederacy (the United States is no longer united)—accelerated advances in military technology, and a reversal of the global trend toward abolition. Their version of WWI takes place in 1898, with a “Second Alliance War” spanning 1914 to 1918. However, the historical facts stay the same: Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination sparks the conflict. Sites of clashes in the first book recur here: Canada’s English-speaking west and French-speaking east remain at odds, while Ireland’s Easter 1916 Uprising diverts British attention. Meanwhile, South America becomes a hot spot, with belligerent nations forming unexpected associations and the USA invading Chile—a prime exporter of nitrates needed for explosives. Compared to the previous volume, this is less of a historical sweep; its meticulous level of detail can be wearisome. On the other hand, the narrower time period allows for comprehensive accounts of naval battles and bombing regimes. The aftermath of Paris’ bombardment is particularly vivid: “refugees packed the Jardin des Tuileries, the smoke from their cooking rising to mingle with the denser smoke from a score of fires.” Made-up headlines and fragments of speeches and letters mimic an authentic history text, while the occasional relaxation of the narrator’s language—starting sentences with “But,” rhetorical questions, the conditional mood, and striking turns of phrase (“Nicholas II, willing to swallow virtually any anti-Jewish canard”)—keeps this from being a mere recitation of events. Those intimately familiar with World War I–era history should spot subtler differences. An overall highlight is FDR’s modified first meeting with Churchill in 1918: their instant rapport as naval personnel helps resolve Anglo-American issues. The book ends with Germany and Austria-Hungary inaugurating a new serfdom for Slavs, a chilling prophecy of continued worldwide slavery.
Stay tuned for the third installment: a treatment of WWII (here the “Third Alliance War”).Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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