An anthology of poignant, humane narratives, emotionally honest and intense in their simplicity.
The voices of 29 volunteers and staffers form a collection of moving testimonies about the American Red Cross.
Turk, who has worked with the Red Cross in the New York area, celebrates the 125th anniversary of the American chapter, but also acknowledges the fact that the organization received criticism after 9/11 and the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. By calling on a wide range of people dedicated to the service of others in times of crisis, Turk refocuses attention on the efforts and needs of individuals, successfully dispelling skepticism about volunteerism, if not completely exonerating the larger bureaucracy. The author concisely traces the organization’s history in her introduction, and she occasionally interrupts her speakers to provide necessary context for the subsequent groupings of oral histories. These begin with World War II and proceed, more or less, chronologically, to Vietnam, then to the narratives of those involved in subsequent disasters, including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The testimonies end with those from some small-town heroes, reminders of the importance of seemingly mundane matters such as CPR training and blood donation. Although brief, the histories contain numerous telling details and unexpected insights. One female morale-booster, or “Donut Dollie,” spent just one year in Vietnam but still thinks of it as the highlight of her life, and she recalls feeling relatively useless upon her return home. Particularly moving stories include that of Ken Thompson, who relates the moment he realized his mother died in the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, or that of a mental health worker who recalls a crane operator’s discovery of a severed leg at Ground Zero in New York.
An anthology of poignant, humane narratives, emotionally honest and intense in their simplicity.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9777192-0-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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