An expansive history of wealth and place marked by deep research and uneven momentum.
A sweeping social history of St. Barth charts the island’s rise from impoverished outpost to billionaire enclave.
Gross, a veteran chronicler of wealth and privilege (House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World’s Most Powerful Address, 2014, etc.), turns his attention to the Caribbean playground of the global rich. Launching his narrative with a roll call of celebrities and billionaires drawn from the worlds of finance, entertainment, and fashion, he swiftly pivots to the island’s colorful and unlikely origins. His prologue evokes the island’s stark past—“There was no running water. …Food was scarce and so was money”—establishing a baseline of hardship that contrasts with today’s megayachts and luxury villas. He traces centuries of colonial rule under Spanish, French, British, and Swedish control, recounting an economy once dependent on salt, indigo, and cotton as well as a population long defined by poverty and isolation. Structured as a long arc of transformation, his narrative follows St. Barth’s emergence as a tax-friendly refuge and luxury destination fueled by ambitious land acquisitions, speculative development and the arrival of wealthy families and entrepreneurs. The rise of fashion photography and media attention in the 1970s helped shape the island’s image as both bohemian retreat and elite enclave, drawing designers, photographers, and celebrities whose presence accelerated its international appeal. Gross also chronicles the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma and the island’s swift rebuilding—a recovery that restored its luxury infrastructure while intensifying debates about overdevelopment and environmental strain. As the author notes, “St. Barth is more a small town than a private club. Its inhabitants worry about the transience and voracious consumption that characterize postmodern society.” Though largely observational, he acknowledges persistent concerns about cultural erosion and ecological strain. And while dense clusters of names and land transactions occasionally slow the pace, his extensive research yields a textured portrait of wealth, land, and identity.
An expansive history of wealth and place marked by deep research and uneven momentum.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9780063410961
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
