by Milton Meltzer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1990
Meltzer, a recent Jane Addams Book Award honoree who has made a specialty of social history for young people, presents the hero of 1492 as a persuasive visionary, a gifted navigator—and a disastrous administrator who was typical of his time in his callous exploitation of native people. Always scrupulous in giving readers a sense of his sources while distinguishing between the documented and the conjectured, Meltzer tells what's known of Columbus' rise from humble beginnings and his quest for backing from the Spanish crown (in the name of gold plus a Catholic mission to the heathen). Concerning the increasingly unsavory later voyages, Meltzer is unabashedly judgmental, calling the treatment of the natives genocide and even making a parallel with Hitler's Germany—a charge he substantiates with facts. In an admirably lucid opening that outlines the "profound changes[s]" of the period, he sets this sorry story in its early Renaissance context; in conclusion, he reiterates the concept that "prejudice blinds the eye" in explaining Columbus' lack of recognition until the 19th century, while crediting the Indians with being an important source of modern ideals of liberty and equality. A compelling, authoritative portrait. The many historical illustrations and maps are less well captioned and reproduced than those in the Levinson biography (above), but the more abundant and specific detail here—as well as Meltzer's unique blend of clarity, wisdom, and compassion—makes this the better of two fine books.
Pub Date: March 1, 1990
ISBN: 0531108996
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Franklin Watts
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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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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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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