Provocative reading for students of geopolitical and economic trends looking for a glimpse at the new world to come.
The world is undergoing a geopolitical realignment—and the West isn’t quite ready for the consequences.
Donald Trump may be preaching a near-isolationist line in foreign policy, but in 2007, he was busily trademarking his name across the nations of Central Asia, Iran among them, “with the intention of producing name-brand vodka,” to say nothing of hotels and casinos. His vehicle, the Silk Road Group, “has subsequently become the focus of considerable media scrutiny,” writes Frankopan (Global History/Oxford Univ.; The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, 2016, etc.) in this engaging survey. If the intensity of American interest in some of those nations has lessened, other countries are paying attention—including, notably, China. Remarks one government official, “we Chinese often say that if you want to get rich, build roads first.” Indeed, China has been building new highways and railway lines throughout the country and beyond its borders, forging direct links with the lucrative markets of Europe and the rich resource-producing nations of Africa. In the latter, Djibouti makes an interesting case in point for Frankopan. Strategically located on the Horn of Africa, it is a natural terminus for highways that might one day radiate across the continent, and it is awash with foreigners: The U.S. has a military base there, but China is building one, too, while France and even Japan have troops there. Meanwhile, not to be left out of the enterprise, Russia has been working in neighboring Somaliland to establish a military presence and is now set on “helping the breakaway republic establish its independence from Somalia and be internationally recognised as a sovereign state.” The course of realignment seems clear and inevitable, and “trying to slow down or stop that change is an illusion,” Frankopan urges. Ignoring it doesn’t help, either….
Provocative reading for students of geopolitical and economic trends looking for a glimpse at the new world to come.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-65640-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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