A detailed, entertaining history of a successful, if bumpy, military alliance.
Anglo-American cooperation during World War II worked, more or less.
Barr (Defence Studies/King’s Coll., London; Pendulum of War: Three Battles at El Alamein, 2005, etc.) quotes but does not entirely agree with United States Army Chief of Staff George Marshall that it was “the most complete unification of military effort ever achieved by two Allied nations.” After reviewing the many painful lessons of the war, the author delivers an astute, always engrossing account of how civilian leaders (Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt) and their army chiefs (Marshall, Alan Brooke) recruited, trained, and deployed two immense armies. This process, as the author notes, “developed over time from rather inauspicious beginnings.” After Pearl Harbor, a Washington-based Combined Chiefs of Staff—Marshall, Adm. Ernest King, and Britain’s virtually unknown but crucial Field Marshal Sir John Dill—hashed out strategy, and supreme commander Dwight Eisenhower worked to keep his generals’ attention on the enemy when they often preferred to fight each other. Many conflicts had less to do with nationality than personality; Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was probably more unpopular with British than American colleagues. Barr does well on the big picture. The majority proposed a Germany-first strategy, but neither the British king nor the American public went along, so the U.S. gave equal attention to Japan. British leaders disliked America’s intention to attack Germany directly and successfully argued for campaigns in North Africa and Italy, which, in retrospect, put only modest pressure on Hitler. Barr does even better when he narrows his focus. Anecdotes, journals, and letters make it clear that prejudices are stubborn and problems remained (Americans hated the British rationing system), but most officers and men worked harder than their superiors to get the job done.
A detailed, entertaining history of a successful, if bumpy, military alliance.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-816-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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