Sometimes too cursory (Harvey’s account of recent Afghan history, for example) but, overall, a trustworthy and well-reasoned...
Communism: a nice idea until it wasn’t.
Like nearly everyone else on the planet, former Economist editor and MP Harvey let the Cold War melt a little bit when Gorbachev came along. But he seems to have been no Burnhamite or neocon to begin with, and in opening this grand narrative of the 19th-century’s great secular religion, Harvey shows at least some sympathy for the communist project, which sets him apart from many other writers in our capital-happy time. Thus, while acknowledging that Marx wasn’t the nicest guy on the block, he allows that it wasn’t Marx’s fault that “the communist creed came to combine the ancient theories of despotism and the divine right of kings” when it landed on Third World soil; for that we have the murderous Lenin and Stalin to thank. To them, too, can be traced a point that Harvey handles very nicely: Far from being an internationalist and utopian creed, communism took on all sorts of local colorations and shibboleths, such that it’s perhaps better to speak of communisms in the plural. Harvey underscores this very point when, late in this sweeping narrative history, he moves away from the monolithic state systems of Russia and China to explore communism’s schismatics and pariahs: Fidelistas and Guevaristas, Red Guards and Khmer Rouge, Eurocommunists of various stripes who, in the 1970s, tried to give a human face to what increasingly seemed an inhuman ideology. Ironically, Harvey notes, the rise of rightist dictatorships in that decade—in places like Chile and the Dominican Republic—had the same result as the hardening of orthodox communism in the Soviet bloc would in the 1980s: as opposition grew, he writes, “the old bourgeois parties picked up support, not the extreme Left.”
Sometimes too cursory (Harvey’s account of recent Afghan history, for example) but, overall, a trustworthy and well-reasoned history of the god that failed.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32909-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
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 Yorkerstaff 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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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