by Peter Clarke ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2008
A fairly perfunctory overview, but sufficiently engaging and well-written. For a more lively, probing social history, see...
An account of the British Empire’s abrupt decline in influence around the globe following World War II.
Clarke (Modern British History/Cambridge Univ.; Hope and Glory: Britain 1900–2000, 2004, etc.) takes a look at the pivotal events that shaped Great Britain’s fortunes following the nationwide jubilation of 1945 and also examines how America evolved into a worldwide superpower. The “thousand days” of the title covers a stretch between 1944 and 1947. The author presents a clear, detailed account of events, casting Winston Churchill as the key figure at the center of Britain’s postwar misfortunes. A brief prologue outlines how Britain headed into shaky economic territory during the war, with huge debts accrued in Churchill’s valiant effort to emerge victorious from battle. Then, drawing on disclosures from diaries belonging to figures such as Churchill’s Assistant Private Secretary, Sir John Colville, and the former prime minister’s personal physician, Lord Moran, as well as information drawn from contemporary newspapers, Clarke examines how Anglo-American relations fractured in the postwar era. In particular, he frequently returns to the Lend-Lease agreement, which was set up so the United States could provide the allied nations with various wartime supplies. The complications inherent in such a deal helped trigger the enormous friction between the two countries once the war ended. America was no longer willing to loan vast sums of money unless its allies pulled out of India and Palestine; this, in turn, led to the dissolution of the British Empire. Clarke concludes by recalling the negotiations that led to Britain’s loss of India, offering some enlightening details on Gandhi’s involvement in the process. There are few revelations here, although the author occasionally fleshes out a familiar story with amusing anecdotes, such as those about Churchill’s frequently erratic behavior during important meetings.
A fairly perfunctory overview, but sufficiently engaging and well-written. For a more lively, probing social history, see David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain: 1945–51 (2008).Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59691-531-2
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
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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 Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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