by Neil Hanson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2016
A book that offers plenty of “shared sojourner’s camaraderie” in the company of a happy, philosophical companion.
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Another memoir from Hanson (Pilgrim Wheels, 2015, etc.) about a cross-country bicycle odyssey.
At nearly 60 years of age, and only a few years after his divorce from his wife of three decades, Hanson attempted a feat that would daunt a young man: he pedaled clear across the country, with his friend Dave, from the west coast to the east—a total of 3,400 miles. The author’s previous memoir took readers from Monterey, California, to Medicine Lodge, Kansas. This second and final volume of his adventures begins on the 20th day of his trip. Readers find him making friends with bikers over chicken-fried steak somewhere in Kansas, “gawking at every marsh hawk that glides across the fence line,” and making his peace with all sorts of difficulties, including pouring rain, baking sun, and a hotel “dripping” with cats. Some adventures are unpleasant and even dangerous. At one point, a pair of nameless hooligans in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, hurl a beer bottle at his back from a speeding truck. Nonetheless, he and his companion, Dave, decide against reporting it, reasoning that “if this is like most places in the country, they don’t take attacks on cyclists seriously.” Hanson is a thoughtful narrator, using many of his encounters as excuses to wax philosophical. Readers will consequently feel fortunate to find themselves immersed in meditations about “a basic difference between the right-wing mindset and the left-wing mindset” in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, “the state of civility in our nation” en route to Ottawa City, Kansas, and how some people attain “that perfect balance of comfort and adventure in their marriage” on the road to Warrensburg, Missouri. As a result, this isn’t just a book for bicycle enthusiasts; it’s also for any fan of the examined life. “The spokes stretching out in front of me are connected to the ones that got me here by the hub that is the here and now,” Hanson notes toward the end of his journey, and by then, readers will know more than a little about where he’s coming from.
A book that offers plenty of “shared sojourner’s camaraderie” in the company of a happy, philosophical companion.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 176
Publisher: High Prairie Press
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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National Book Award Finalist
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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BOOK TO SCREEN
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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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