A gripping but uneven account of a dangerous voyage.
In this memoir, a man recounts his adventures as a physician on an icebreaker’s voyage to Antarctica.
Amid the tumult of 1969, Bunes volunteered to be the doctor aboard the United States Coast Guard Cutter Glacier, the “largest, toughest, and most powerful icebreaker in the free world.” The author was partly motivated by a desire to avoid deployment to Vietnam but also by a longing for the excitement of travel to exotic locales. Yet he was unprepared for the perils of a mission in the “most remote place in the world” as well as the coldest and the freight of responsibilities with which he would be saddled as the ship’s physician. While navigating the treacherous Bismarck Strait, the vessel collided with a glacier, and later became “imprisoned” in the Weddell Sea—the crew of 200 was trapped in a cage of ice, with the nearest open water 100 miles away. Bunes places the drama of the ship’s immobility at the center of his memoir, which also briefly chronicles his life before service on the Glacier. He repeatedly draws parallels between the vessel’s plight and the famous explorations of Antarctica accomplished by Ernest Shackleton, who sailed on the “ill-fated” ship the Endurance. The author’s remembrance is brimming with insights as well as captivating photographs by Bunes and others. But the comparison with the Endurance sometimes diminishes the drama the author relates. Rather than let the powerful facts speak for themselves, he tirelessly reminds readers of the perilousness of the Coast Guard ship’s position. Commenting on the turbulence experienced during a storm, Bunes writes: “I thought we were all going to die. And that brink-of-disaster scenario kept happening over and over. It was a nightmare. It felt like someone was holding a six-gun to my head and playing Russian Roulette. He’d pull the trigger and the hammer would fall on one of the five empty chambers. Then he’d grab a new gun and repeat the whole process.” This theatrical style finally becomes exhausting, a shame since the author’s memoir is full of riveting details.
A gripping but uneven account of a dangerous voyage.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4930-6034-4
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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