Tapping new sources for the first time, this must surely be considered the definitive work on Americans who fought and died for the Spanish Republic. Historian Carroll (It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, 1982, etc.) examines the trajectory of the 3,000 Americans who fought during the Spanish Civil War (193639). Though they were often called ``The Abraham Lincoln Brigade,'' this appellation, he notes, is not strictly correct. The first Americans to aid Republican Spain served in the Abraham Lincoln battalion of one of the International Brigades (composed of non-Spaniards), but this was only a fraction of all US volunteers. Still, the moniker gained currency to refer to all Americans who fought for the Republic. Carroll broadly traces the motivations of those who volunteered. Most, but not all, were Old Left Communists (the first detachment of Americans was recruited on the instructions of Moscow) who signed up to save a beleaguered socialist ally. Some felt that American democratic ideals were at stake as Fascists under Franco sought to overthrow the duly elected Socialist Popular Front. About one third of the volunteers were Jews, aware early on of the perils of Fascism. For all, Carroll says, the war became the most significant event of their lives. Carroll examines not only the battles (from the Americans' first appearance, when they were mistaken for Russians and saved Madrid from being overrun by Royalist Fascists) but also the soldiers' homecomings and their years as veterans. Many went on to aid US intelligence against the Fascists in the early days of WW II despite an order of neutrality from Russia. The story is brought down through their political activities of the McCarthy era and to the present day. With access to previously unattainable archives in Moscow and using extensive interviews and written material, Carroll tells a magnificent tale of hope, idealism, heroism, honor, death, and betrayal.
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8047-2276-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Stanford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
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
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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