A lucid description of a year that made all the horror possible, even inevitable.
Following the current trend of focusing a work of history on a single year, a journalist and academic examines the year that Hitler spent in Landsberg Prison for his failed putsch of 1923.
Range (Murder in the Yoga Store, 2013, etc.)—a former correspondent for U.S. News & World Report and a visiting scholar who’s sojourned at several prestigious institutions, including Harvard and the University of North Carolina—takes some time escorting us through 1923, and even earlier, before arriving at 1924 nearly 125 pages in. He rehearses the life of Hitler, the German defeat in World War I, and the horrible postwar economy that was one of the factors enabling a fiery ex-corporal from Austria to rise in Germany’s extreme right-wing political world. Range seems simultaneously disgusted and dazzled by his subject. Hitler’s political and cultural views were, of course, repellant and murderous, but the man could deliver a stemwinder and could somehow attract to his cause all sorts of adherents, from the thugs who pounded on his enemies to the wealthy folks who kept him financially afloat. One society woman bought for him the typewriter that he used to pound out the first volume of Mein Kampf during his yearlong incarceration. (He wrote the second volume shortly after his release.) Range shows us Hitler’s despair after his failed putsch late in 1923 and his hunger strike and other behavior in Landsberg. It was, the author demonstrates, his trial that re-energized the future dictator and drew even more Germans to his cause. He had a steady stream of visitors, and one fellow prisoner, Rudolf Hess, became a key figure in the Third Reich. Range’s style is generally fluid and journalistic; his deep knowledge of the figures and events enables him to narrate clearly without being sucked into excessive explication.
A lucid description of a year that made all the horror possible, even inevitable.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-38403-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
HISTORY | HOLOCAUST | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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