A well-researched, clearly written biography of a strange character.
Longtime magazine journalist Kobel (Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, 2007) documents the controversial life and death of Professor John Buettner-Janusch (1924-1992), the world's expert on lemurs and a man so out of control that he served two prison terms for two separate crimes.
Buettner-Janusch gained his reputation as an animal anthropologist at Duke University and New York University. There is no question his research on the lemur species added greatly to the knowledge of animal and human behavior. However, the flamboyant professor struck almost everybody who knew him as strange due to his moodiness, authoritarian manner, persecution complex, sartorial choices and sexual preferences. While married to a fellow researcher, he maintained a modicum of equilibrium, but after her cancer-related death in 1977, the professor's strangeness increased noticeably. Law enforcement authorities began investigating the use of his NYU research laboratory for the manufacture of LSD and other illegal narcotics unrelated to the lemur research. Charged with felonies by federal prosecutors, Buettner-Janusch ended up in prison after a jury trial. Released in 1983 but still on parole, the former famous researcher could not find meaningful employment. He began to plot revenge against men and women he felt had betrayed him, focusing especially on the federal judge, Charles Brieant, who presided at the drug manufacturing trial. In 1987, the unbalanced former professor sent poisoned chocolates to the judge's home on Valentine's Day. The judge never consumed the candy, but his wife did and became seriously ill. Buettner-Janusch pled guilty and received a new prison sentence. He died in prison in 1992. He rarely, if ever, expressed remorse and died mostly forgotten.
A well-researched, clearly written biography of a strange character.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7627-7377-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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