An impressively thinking-outside-of-the-box approach to reconsidering this pivotal Asian nation and its people.
A fresh look at the Afghans that discards old legends and stereotypes and characterizes the people as tremendously mobile and cosmopolitan.
Crews (History/Stanford Univ.; For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia, 2006, etc.) rejects the view of Afghanistan as “hopelessly archaic and insular” and finds that it has been long and unfairly defined by foreign occupiers. “The great powers who intervened in the country dictated what kinds of questions have been asked,” writes the author, and that meant the British, the Russians, and the Americans. Before there was an Afghanistan, there were “imperial cosmopolitans, the subjects of sprawling empires with far-flung centers of gravity in Iran, Central Asia, and north India.” By turns, the Mughal, Safavid, and Uzbek set up ruling dynasties across the land, but it was the remarkable network of commerce that linked the inhabitants. The rise of a true Afghan empire occurred in the 18th century with the Durrani, although soon enough, European rivalries began to intrude, especially entanglements with the British. Thanks to Lord Elphinstone, the Afghans came to be known for their “manly spirit of independence” and other less admirable traits. Crews devotes a chapter to the restless migration of the Afghans (into Russia, India, China, Africa, and Australia), even as the borders of their country were just beginning to coalesce. Insecurity and violence prompted this movement but also commercial trading, a theme that has remained constant to the present. Gradual exposure to global currents brought Afghanistan into the modern sphere, and its natural resources drew industrial powers. Enter the United States by the 1930s, willing to lend its developmental assistance while keeping an eye on how the country could play against Russia in the Cold War. Crews also examines the cannabis and heroin industries, the revolutionary currents and growth of jihadi movements, and the important role of women in the country’s modern makeup.
An impressively thinking-outside-of-the-box approach to reconsidering this pivotal Asian nation and its people.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-674-28609-2
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
