An expert on national security challenges stereotypes of Islamic militancy and the threat it poses.
Leiken (Why Nicaragua Vanished, 2003, etc.) analyzes social policies affecting Muslim immigrant communities in France, the U.K. and Germany, and how these have affected recruitment to Islamic jihadist organizations. Rejecting a one-size-fits-all categorization of Islam, he suggests that it is the “postmigrant” second-generation of young men who provide potential recruits for terrorist organizations in Europe and the United States, especially as they face a crisis of identity in a time of economic stagnation. The author draws the conclusion that the apparently socially repressive policies adopted by the French have proven to be most successful in dealing with a possible threat of terrorism, while the British face a serious problem. Migrants from Algeria are encouraged to view themselves as French and are expected to assimilate French culture. Leiken believes that the 2005 street riots were fueled by economic conditions rather than ideology. In contrast, the terrorist attack on the British subway system was ideologically motivated. The author attributes the rise of Islamic terrorism in the U.K. to British multiculturism. Leaders in Muslim communities received generous government subsidies and were expected to act as mediators for the Muslim population, which was not encouraged to assimilate. Migrant laborers generally maintain close ties to their native communities, which their children lack, leaving them vulnerable to terrorist recruitment. By offering apprenticeship programs and vocational training, Germans provided them a road to economic, if not social, integration and an alternative to radicalism. Leiken provides a historical, ethnic and socioeconomic context that identifies important differences as opposed to empty generalities. Both well written and researched—a valuable contribution to an ongoing discussion.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-532897-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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
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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