A first-rate analysis for military buffs.
The final volume in the author’s acclaimed World War II series.
Caddick-Adams covers the 100 days from late January 1945 until May 8. He begins by arguing that many accounts of the war in Western Europe focus too heavily on D-Day, the summer battles in Normandy, and the Battle of the Bulge. “Like a movie suddenly speeded up,” historians treat this period as an anticlimax. “Once across the Rhine,” writes the author, “the advance into Germany of March-May often passes in a few paragraphs, with the end seemingly predetermined, and it only remained to occupy territory and mop up a few diehards.” In his first anecdote, Caddick-Adams illustrates this error. In mid-March 1945, more than 600 American soldiers crossed into Germany and alerted the enemy by stumbling into a minefield; 456 became casualties or prisoners. Having recovered from the Battle of the Bulge, the Allies pushed into Germany, which meant confronting the Westwall, a defense line that “comprised more than 18,000 bunkers and stretched four hundred miles from Holland to the Swiss frontier.” Although it was a formidable defense, Caddick-Adams points out that fixed defenses “cannot halt an opponent unless fully manned and infinitely resourced.” In 1945, the Wehrmacht consisted mostly of burned-out veterans and poorly trained, dispirited replacements. Many historians emphasize their eagerness to surrender, but Caddick-Adams points out that a few disciplined German units maintained a powerful resistance until the end. The author divides the campaign into three parts: conquest of the Rhineland (a brutal business), the effort to cross the Rhine (mostly through good luck and massive resources), and the race across Germany (easier than the previous two but never a walkover). Caddick-Adams includes vivid anecdotes, small-unit fireworks, and strong, well-informed personal opinions on the often unwise decisions of leaders. He also recounts mass movements that require close attention to his maps and dutifully records more names and nicknames of smaller units and their commanders than general readers require.
A first-rate analysis for military buffs.Pub Date: July 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-19-060186-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
