A careful study, obviously sympathetic to the Republican cause but generally evenhanded.
Searching study of the role of the press in shaping world opinion about the Spanish Republic and its enemies—a role that, regrettably, was not enough to stir world leaders to action.
In a broad gallery of heroes, along with a few villains, Preston (Spanish History/London School of Economics; The Spanish Civil War, 2006, etc.) singles out the “meticulously honest” New York Times correspondent Herbert L. Matthews, who wrote of the uneven battle between Franco’s fascist armies, backed by troops, planes and armaments from Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, and the Republican forces, supplemented mostly by leftist volunteers from around the world (including George Orwell and André Malraux). Matthews, Preston writes, was hounded throughout his posting by pro-Franco forces in the United States, including the so-called International Catholic Truth Society and the Catholic diocese of Brooklyn, which organized a boycott of the Times to protest Matthews’ fair reporting. The Times caved, sort of, sending in Franco booster William P. Carney in the interest of balance, then running his “unashamedly partisan material,” to say nothing of stories that were pure inventions. Carney’s reporting, Preston insists, was roundly contradicted by many hands—and the press corps in Spain eventually included Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, as well as relative unknowns such as the Soviet reporter Mikhail Koltsov. Regardless of their politics, many journalists fell into the usual habits of bed- and barhopping, which provides some of the lighter moments in then narrative. Sobering, however, is the author’s analysis of why the Western powers, though knowing that Spain was a prelude for a great confrontation with the Axis, failed to back the Republican government in a moment of cowardice and calculation—Franklin Roosevelt told Interior Secretary Harold Ickes that do so “would mean the loss of every Catholic vote next fall.” Particularly intriguing is Preston’s account of how the Guernica story, known to us today mostly by way of Picasso, broke—with Carney reporting for the New York Times that the Basques had bombed themselves.
A careful study, obviously sympathetic to the Republican cause but generally evenhanded.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60239-767-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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