Yakimov tracks several dozen family members through a century’s worth of Balkan history, from 1890 through 2009, through civil strife, two world wars and the collapse of communism.
As in her first book (Dreams and Shadows, 2006), here Yakimov draws on her personal recollections and accounts from relatives and friends to create a full-bodied tapestry of stories, woven into and around the history of Bulgaria. Readers who know little about the Balkan region will learn much, but could improve their understanding by reading some supplemental material as well. After a plodding first section, the second details the 1949 escape of 23 people from Bulgaria, where nationalization was underway, to Yugoslavia, where political uncertainty ruled but freedom seemed more likely. The refugees, most of whom were related to the author, found more hardship in Yugoslavia’s work camps. Ultimately, several of the group emigrated to Canada and the United States, where they found living conditions in stark contrast to those they left behind. Throughout the book, Yakimov’s descriptions place readers firmly in each scene so they can smell the warm earth at harvest time or feel the distrust in a neighbor’s gaze. But while many scenes are alive with details, the characters’ life stories are meted out in too-sparse portions, making it difficult to get a cohesive view of the family and to sort out relationships among the various characters. As the book follows the immigrants in North America, the narrative bounces from country to country, which can be hard to follow. However, in the final section and epilogue, Yakimov wraps the saga in a blanket of unifying questions about endurance, family ties and the fine line between heritage and home. While the work focuses on hardships, hope is a recurring theme. Yakimov’s book shines in its details, but spreads itself too thin at times.
Pub Date: July 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-1462019847
Page Count: 223
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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