If readers accept Brigham’s evidence, which is considerable, the still-living Kissinger deserves to be disgraced.
A historian specializing in American foreign policy mines newly available archives to expose Henry Kissinger as a lying, self-serving, and incompetent presidential adviser who collaborated with Richard Nixon to allow the North Vietnamese victory against the American-backed South Vietnamese.
Although countless words have been published about the Vietnam War, Brigham (History and International Relations/Vassar Coll.; The United States and Iraq Since 1990: A Brief History with Documents, 2013, etc.) explains that his book is the first to use certain material from Kissinger’s papers housed at Yale University, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, and “South Vietnamese sources contained in the National Archives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.” As Brigham evaluated the fresh material, he compared it to Kissinger’s publicly stated definition of American “success” in Vietnam. The touchstone of Kissinger’s definition could be stated as “peace with honor” before the U.S. military withdrew troops; he had hoped to achieve peace with honor tactically by waging “war for peace.” In section after section throughout the book, Brigham quotes from specific Kissinger documents and then comments on how and why Kissinger’s tactics failed. The evidence builds chronologically as each of the lengthy chapters explores how each failed tactic led Kissinger to double down on his lying while becomingly increasingly reckless with military lives and budgetary resources. One of the most compelling elements of the book is Brigham’s portrayal of Kissinger’s manipulation of an emotionally insecure Nixon. The president often responded by expressing doubts about Kissinger’s methods, but he did Kissinger’s bidding more often than not out of desperation to win over the American electorate during the 1972 election cycle. As the author methodically chronicles the turmoil inside the U.S. government, his research is especially illuminating about how Kissinger sabotaged the credibility of Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.
If readers accept Brigham’s evidence, which is considerable, the still-living Kissinger deserves to be disgraced.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61039-702-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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
© 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
