A powerful firsthand account of a crisis that will continue to receive even more attention in the years to come.
Bravely following the refugee crisis from the Middle East to the European Union as it gains volume and urgency.
The former Egypt correspondent for the Guardian and fortuitously named “the inaugural migration correspondent” at the paper just last year, Kingsley (How to be Danish: A Journey to the Cultural Heart of Denmark, 2014) takes both a personal and altruistic approach to the massive migration of peoples fleeing Syria and other global hot spots. In the past few years, there has been a huge spike in the numbers of civilians fleeing conflicts in the Middle East—indeed, an unprecedented number not equaled since the end of World War II. Since 2014, more than 1.4 million people crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach ports in Turkey, Greece, or Italy, and from there to more benevolent havens in northern Europe such as Sweden and (now) Germany. Kingsley diligently pursues the fates of several specific refugees (though he prefers the more neutral word “migrant” over the politically heavy “refugee”). For example, Hashem, a Damascus civil servant with a wife and three sons, was rounded up in 2012 by the Syrian dictator’s police force, senselessly imprisoned and tortured, before the innocent man realized he and his family had to flee to survive. So he headed out on a long, expensive, and very dangerous journey, by boat, rail, and foot, from Egypt to Sweden, where he hoped to find permanent residence and eventually bring his family with him. Elsewhere, the author examines the life of the smuggler, who, in many cases, was once a migrant himself but is now taking advantage of the vulnerable refugees and getting rich; and people like Eric Kempson, a volunteer on the Turkish island of Lesvos, who actually helps the migrants with sorely needed food, water, and transportation when they literally wash ashore. The numbers will keep growing, notes the author, and denying the problem or closing the borders will only make it worse.
A powerful firsthand account of a crisis that will continue to receive even more attention in the years to come.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1631492556
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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 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
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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