by Paul French ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014
An astute work that examines all facets of this Orwellian state.
A thorough probing of the ongoing causes behind North Korea’s “march of misery.”
There is no shortage of recent works by Westerners attempting to crack the deeply insulated pariah state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, most notably Andrei Lankov’s The Real North Korea and Victor Cha’s The Impossible State. Yet Shanghai-based Asia commentator French (Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China, 2012, etc.) offers excellent insight into the economic machinations that have kept the Kim dynasty afloat since 1948 despite catastrophic cycles of industrial collapse, famine, nuclear brinkmanship and military oppression. One of the last Cold War holdouts, the DPRK, unlike China, is so entrenched in its guiding philosophy of Juche, or self-sufficiency, that it has been unable to instigate the same kinds of economic reforms as China. Not without trying: French carefully looks at the North Korean attempts, under Kim Jong-il and the watchful eyes of the Chinese, to instigate some much-needed reforms in 2002—e.g., price reforms and the ending of the public distribution system, along with the implementation of a special economic zone, Sinuiju, which failed largely due to the lack of any infrastructure in the area. The wasteful and absurd policies of the rigid command economy mean there is no room for the development of private enterprise. Coupled with the discouragement of foreign investment, outmoded industry, unwise agricultural systems and underutilized natural resources, French sees the recipe for repeated economic stagnation and decline, forcing the DPRK to rely on subsidies from the Soviet Union (while they lasted) and China. As long as the Kim leadership pursues its “military first” campaign, thereby spending its precious resources on a huge standing army rather than feeding its own people or engaging diplomatically, the “drip-feeding” by the West will be its only sustaining option.
An astute work that examines all facets of this Orwellian state.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78032-947-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Zed Books
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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PERSPECTIVES
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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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
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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