Was the Allied victory in WW II an inevitable triumph of good over evil? No, says Overy (History/King's College, London; The Air War: 19391945, 1981, etc.), in this incisive analysis of the factors that led to victory over Germany, Italy, and Japan. In early 1942, Overy points out, the Axis powers were triumphant in every world theater. Japan had, in a single blow, crippled Allied fleets, had conquered all the Pacific islands within a 1,000-mile perimeter, and was threatening an apparently defenseless Australia. Germany had conquered much of Europe and had inflicted devastating, losses on the Soviet Union. Britain was prostrate, its lifelines threatened by relentless U-boat attacks. The US had yet to mount an armament program, and the Soviet Union seemed industrially exhausted. Yet by 1944 Allied victory was simply a matter of time. Overy explains this remarkable reversal of fortune by reviewing Allied success in each of four zones: the sea war, in which the Allies capitalized on vast US and British fleets, shrewd use of airplanes at sea, and superior intelligence; the Soviet victory on the Eastern front, where Hitler underestimated both the fighting spirit and the renewed production potential of the Soviets; the air war, in which Allied long-range bombing forced the Germans to fight the last two years of the war without air support; and the reconquest of Europe after the D-Day invasion, which sealed Hitler's fate. Overy also analyzes the superior control of resources by the Allies, the combat effectiveness of Allied and Axis troops, the leadership of the two sides, and the moral contrasts between them. He concludes that ``the Allies won . . . because they turned their economic strength into effective fighting power, and turned the moral energies of their people into an effective will to win.'' A cogent look at the 20th century's great turning point. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection; History Book Club main selection)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03925-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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 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
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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