Rizk, in his debut, warns of the coming destruction of the country unless its hapless citizens rise up and repent.
Debut author Rizk, who once taught calculus to Chinese exchange students in Englewood, New Jersey, reveals little else about himself in this diatribe against greed, immortality and pervasive government corruption. His historical narrative comes no closer to the present day than the pernicious behavior of the two Bush administrations; the last decade goes largely unmentioned. But the book’s theme, which draws heavily on biblical prophecy in the Book of Revelation, is clear: Unless societies and their leaders execute justice, then doom is inevitable. The timing of the destruction, Rizk says, will depend on when less than a handful of godly people can be found in a city or a state, and when God finally runs out of patience. However, there will be warnings first, the author says, such as when terrorists made an abortive earlier attempt in 1993 to take down the World Trade Center before it finally fell in 2001. Although the book tries to be enigmatic, it broadly hints that the Babylon prophesized to fall in the Book of Revelation precisely fits the profile of modern-day New York, right down to the seven letters in each name. The author’s fervent hope, he says, is to get his message out that repentance is the only real homeland security before powerful forces intercede to shut him up. This brief book has the quality of a New York City cab ride, during which the driver holds forth while the passenger listens with varying levels of interest and credulity. Some moments have a distant ring of truth, as when Rizk suggests that debates about abortion never mention that “unmarried women like to have sex.” However, the book then moves into moral zealotry, as it goes on to say that “their gods are their bellies and fornications are their glory.” The author also notes that Harvard and Yale “sell their degrees to anyone who can pay”; many people who have applied with money in hand, however, would not agree.
A fulfillment of the author’s desire to publicly speak the truth as he sees it.
Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493124114
Page Count: 62
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2014
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 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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