by Richard S. Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 18, 2008
Extraordinarily detailed and extremely engaging.
A highly readable blow-by-blow account of the first Iraq War.
Lowry, a chip designer for an aerospace firm when the Gulf War began in 1991, was dissatisfied with the level of information available while Desert Storm raged and was equally disappointed with the first books released after the conflict ended. So he turned to the military itself to gather information about the war, writing letters to the commanding generals of each unit who participated in the conflict. This approach netted a large amount of information, which Lowry distilled into The Gulf War Chronicles, a thorough account of the entire war from the initial aerial bombardment to the ground war to the Allies’ eventual victory. Thanks to the reams of information at Lowry’s disposal, this book is striking in its level of detail, yet switches effortlessly from the dry data of troop placement and technical specs to firsthand accounts of covert action and engrossing personal narratives from the soldiers who took part in the conflict. Lowry frequently presents soldiers’ stories in their own words, which adds a personal layer missing from similar military histories–when necessary, Lowry masterfully shifts from broad overviews of the entire theater to the experiences of individuals. Since this book is designed for general readers as well as military historians, the author includes a helpful appendix of military acronyms. The major impediment to this book’s readability is the one-sided nature of the conflict itself. This book is written strictly from the Coalition point of view, so readers interested in the Iraqi perspective are bound to be disappointed. But while the reader can certainly find accounts of more closely contested military conflicts, this account is particularly relevant to the current situation in the Middle East. For those curious about Allied operations in Desert Storm, it is difficult to imagine a better resource.
Extraordinarily detailed and extremely engaging.Pub Date: March 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-60528-006-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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