For World War I and military scholars and historians.
A military historian re-examines “this infamous battle, considering it afresh with the accumulated knowledge of a century of scholarship.”
Although traditionally portrayed as the usual World War I horror show, the “ultimate expression of meaningless, industrialized slaughter,” the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele does not qualify, writes Lloyd (Military and Imperial History/King’s Coll., London; Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I, 2014, etc.), whose lively if gruesome account concludes that its generals were not as stupid as portrayed and that Passchendaele was an Allied victory—sort of. By early 1917, painful experience had taught Britain’s commander, Gen. Douglas Haig, that mass assaults on enemy defenses produced unacceptable casualties. As a result, he had adopted a tactic of immense artillery preparation followed by coordinated attacks on specific strong points. The Germans countered by constructing multiple defensive lines, manning forward trenches lightly, and keeping large forces in reserve to counterattack. This worked, and Haig’s initial attack in July failed with catastrophic losses. Displaying uncharacteristic imagination, he turned to Second Army leader Herbert Plumer, whose solution (“bite and hold”) was to attack, halt after the initial short advance, dig in, and send reinforcements to resist the inevitable counterstrike. The results in September and October were three victories (by WWI standards), which greatly distressed the German high command. Carried away, Haig continued to launch offensives, minus careful preparation and in the face of torrential autumn rains and increasing resistance. All failed amid unspeakable misery in the legendary Flanders mud. Lloyd excels in describing the campaign’s run-up and consequences, and he shows equal skill describing the fighting. However, since this was a relentless series of individual actions featuring terrible casualties and unimaginable suffering under awful conditions, followed by more of the same, many readers will find it a tough slog.
For World War I and military scholars and historians.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-465-09477-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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