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TO END A WAR

FROM SARAJEVO TO DAYTON AND BEYOND

A riveting and forthright insider account of the Dayton accords and their aftermath, by their primary architect. For Holbrooke, a proponent of the use of force to end the Bosnian crisis, the assignment as assistant secretary of state during Clinton’s first administration (1994—96) offered an opportunity to implement changes he had long advocated. The core of Holbrooke’s report, and by far the most vibrant and disarming, is his candid account of the Dayton accords that ended the war. “The negotiations,” he writes, “were simultaneously cerebral and physical, abstract and personal . . . something like a combination of chess and mountain climbing.” To End a War captures this mood precisely; Holbrooke offers gripping tales of marathon 24-hour sessions, scenes of the Balkan leaders screaming at one another and at the Americans, and offers unforgettable portraits of Milosevic, Izetbegovic, and Tudjman. The place seethes with frustration. When Anthony Lake comments that this is “the craziest zoo I’ve ever seen,” Holbrooke feels satisfied that he has “understood the special weirdness of Dayton.” The consummate diplomat and team member, Holbrooke tells not only of his own fiercely dedicated work but graciously praises and documents the efforts of negotiators, diplomats, politicians, and humanitarian workers who continue to take part in making and implementing policy. While not exactly literary, Holbrooke’s memoir is both highly literate and informed, as well as notably readable. Quotations appear from W.H. Auden, Kierkegaard, and Melville, among others. It’s also steeped in the tradition of diplomatic memoirs by eminent diplomat/authors such as Henry Kissinger and Harold Nicolson. While limiting his discussion to the Balkans and the Dayton accords, Holbrooke always has an eye to the broader picture, drawing frequent historical comparisons. A diplomatic memoir of uncommon honesty and insight and a sobering tale for those who dismiss the Dayton accords as an unjust peace. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)

Pub Date: June 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-375-50057-X

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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 Yorker staff 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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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