A meticulously researched biography that reclaims WW I's unchallenged ace of aces from the mists and myths of time. Drawing on previously unavailable archives (including his subject's personal papers) and standard references, historian Kilduff sheds new light not only on the short, violent life of Manfred Albrecht von Richthofen but also on the development of military aviation in imperial Germany during what once was called the Great War. A scion of the Prussian nobility, Richthofen was a 22-year-old cavalry officer when hostilities broke out between the Central Powers and the Allies. Transferring to the fledgling Air Service in search of action, he qualified as a pilot and joined a fighter squadron on the Western Front in the summer of 1916. By the time Richthofen was killed in a dogfight over the Somme on April 21, 1918, he had been credited with 80 victories in aerial combat against British and French foes. A hunter by heritage as well as inclination, the deadly young aviator had a flair for the dramatic (exemplified in the blood-red color of his planes) and a penchant for collecting trophies from the aircraft of downed victims. A national hero long before his death, Richthofen also proved an aggressive tactician and talented commander. Kilduff provides a wealth of perspectives on the so-called Red Baron (``a 20th-century man with 19th-century ideals''), at one point likening him to the Teutonic knights who rampaged through Medieval Europe. In another vein, the author makes a fine job of distinguishing among the capabilities of the open-cockpit ``crates'' that vied for control of the unfriendly skies—Albatrosses, Fokkers, Nieuports, Sopwiths, Spads, etc. A vivid, tellingly detailed account of a master airman and the convulsive conflict in which he made a name for himself. (Photos- -not seen)
Pub Date: March 4, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-00877-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1994
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
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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