The title of this book by columnist Reeves (President Kennedy: Profile in Power, 1993) far exceeds its grasp. In 12 short chapters, which read more like distinct columns than the integrated sections of a well-thought-out book, Reeves analyzes the Clinton presidency and dissects the reasons it has failed to capture the hearts of the American people. Reeves, a proven political observer of great merit, comes up with occasional gems, such as his observation that Clinton "could be called the first true president of a new American public opinion democracy, acting as a facilitator for the wobbly will of the people." The phrase captures a major thesis of this slim book, that polls rather than principles motivate Clinton and Congress, and that all Washington suffers from too much information received and then acted upon—or reacted to—much too quickly. To make matters worse, in the shark-infested waters of talk-radio, take-no-prisoners modern American politics, Clinton's repeated gaffes make him so much live bait. Reeves offers various theories for Clinton's troubles: his ethical lapses; his disorganization; his wife's influence; middle America's continuing resentment of the children of the '60s; the ways in which Clinton committed bis life to winning the presidency but failed to prepare himself to govern once he got there. In the end, however, it is difficult to tell what point Reeves is trying to make. He paints a worse picture of the times than of the man and, perhaps inadvertently, generates sympathy for the president he sets out to critique. Reeves is capable of much better than this book, apparently rushed into print in time for the 1996 elections. He looked at the Kennedy administration from a perspective of 30 years. Perhaps he will try again with Clinton, from a perspective slightly broader than that of last week's news.
Pub Date: April 19, 1996
ISBN: 0-8362-1091-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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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