Reagan emerges in strong and flattering light here, one of several scholarly books to take a favorably revisionist view of...
Was Ronald Reagan, intrepid wager of wars hot and cold, a secret peacenik? Young scholar Lettow argues in the affirmative.
Much as he presumed that tax cuts for the wealthy would stimulate the lower levels of the economy, Reagan apparently believed that his government could launch a massive arms buildup and thereby “attain deep cuts in nuclear weapons”; the trick was simply to outspend the Soviets until they quit. Historians and economists will argue over the relative merits of both approaches, but Lettow traces Reagan’s willingness to take such daring moves to his longstanding dislike of nuclear weapons and of those who encouraged such follies as Mutually Assured Destruction and preemptive first strikes: Robert McNamara, for instance, whom Reagan “publicly derided as ‘that efficient disaster,’ ” and even Henry Kissinger, who encouraged détente rather than reheated competition between the American and Soviet systems. Reagan, writes Lettow, had been active in antinuclear politics in his liberal Hollywood period, and he held to his commitment to abolish nuclear weapons even after his swing to the right. Reagan’s antinuclearism now took curious though internally consistent forms, the outgrowth of his view that only if the US had more nuclear weapons than anyone else—and, later, the protective Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) “Star Wars” shield—could nuclear war ever be averted. His views courted controversy: many ordinary citizens, of course, failed to see the merit of a new and improved arms race in the 1980s, while Reagan’s own Joint Chiefs of Staff pointedly failed to endorse Reagan’s vaunted MX missile initiative. Yet Reagan and his circle were convinced (as, it seems, is Lettow) that the Kremlin’s fears about SDI “were a principal factor driving the Soviets’ increased willingness to negotiate deep cuts in offensive nuclear forces”—though Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power may have had something to do with the change, too.
Reagan emerges in strong and flattering light here, one of several scholarly books to take a favorably revisionist view of his presidency in recent history. Reagan admirers will likely concur, though critics may wonder why his long-harbored plans were never really put in motion.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6307-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
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
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