Thoroughly researched, closely argued, utterly convincing—with dramatic irony that is nearly unbearable. (40 b&w...
A meticulous analysis of December 7, 1941, and a ringing defense of Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, the man who faced the blame for that day’s stunning Japanese success.
Gannon (Black May 1943, 1998, etc.) begins with the attack itself—but this is only an adumbration of the fuller description he provides later in his compelling study. (Readers who have seen Michael Bay’s film Pearl Harbor will recognize many events and some dialogue that originated in the myriad documents Gannon quotes.) The author retreats a few years and examines the events and personalities that coalesced at Pearl Harbor. He’s a staunch supporter of Adm. Kimmel: “The words Kimmel and dereliction,” he writes, “were antithetical.” Gannon also chides conspiracy theorists for fanning the flames of the incendiary (and unsupportable) theory that FDR knew in advance of the attack and withheld that intelligence in order to propel the country into WWII. Gannon reviews the increasing tensions between the US and Japan and convincingly shows how the escalating punitive trade restrictions placed on Japan left the US little room to negotiate as the storm clouds gathered. By late July 1941, says Gannon, “There were no more peaceful sanctions at American disposal.” As diplomacy breaks down, Gannon takes us back and forth between Japan and the US, between the architects of the attack and those who (in his view) did the best they could with extremely limited resources. (There were not enough reconnaissance aircraft to explore more than a tiny fraction of the Pacific.) Occasionally, the Tom Clancy in Gannon cannot resist supplying arcane details that impede the flow of his narrative. We learn the following about the takeoff of a PBY: “The two 14-cylinder, 1200 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-1830-82 engines on the wing above his head put out a thunderous din.”
Thoroughly researched, closely argued, utterly convincing—with dramatic irony that is nearly unbearable. (40 b&w illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6698-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
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
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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