by Paul Hockenos ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2017
The author’s loyalty and love for Berlin are evident and may well be contagious, but he is short on analysis and insight.
An introduction to the countercultures of Berlin.
In the years before the Berlin Wall came down, West Berlin, writes American journalist Hockenos (Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An Alternative History of Postwar Germany, 2007, etc.), was “a sanctuary for contrarians looking to lose themselves, to search and reinvent.” East Berlin, too, “sheltered a bohème every bit as raw and inventive as [West Berlin’s], perhaps even more so.” Dissent took many forms, “from sporting punk coiffeurs to communal living,” each one subject to reprisal. In his new book, the author offers a love letter of sorts to both halves of the city. He describes the “broad society of new wavers and punks, queers of all types,” and the artists, musicians, and squatters who created the countercultural life, whether above- or belowground, of both Berlins. Hockenos, who has spent most of his adult life in Berlin, divides the book geographically: he begins with the West, moves on to the East, and, at the end, includes a slim section on the “new” Berlin, the city of reunification. Despite those divisions, the narrative is largely unstructured and rambling. The author moves loosely from one topic to another, never digging deeply enough. He introduces us to many colorful characters—including fashion designer Danielle de Picciotto, French street artist Thierry Noir, and actress and musician Christiane F.—but doesn’t stick with any one of them for long. Hockenos also relies on cliché, a habit that doesn’t suit much of his subject matter—e.g., artistic innovation. A random sampling: “sowed the seeds,” “a thorn in the side,” “started a ball rolling,” “showed him the door,” “when push came to shove”—not to mention the too-frequent use of the phrase “do-it-yourself.”
The author’s loyalty and love for Berlin are evident and may well be contagious, but he is short on analysis and insight.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62097-195-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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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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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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by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
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
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