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HARD BARGAIN

HOW FDR TWISTED CHURCHILL'S ARM, EVADED THE LAW, AND CHANGED THE ROLE OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY

Los Angeles Times correspondent Shogan argues that FDR negotiated harshly and covertly with a beleaguered Winston Churchill in the celebrated 1940 deal that marked the commencement of Anglo-American cooperation in WW II. The story's outline is well-known: While England was fighting for survival in the Battle of Britain, President Roosevelt braved isolationist sentiment to trade a handful of old destroyers (badly needed by the Royal Navy to counter the German U-boat onslaught) for American bases in British colonies. The deal laid the foundation for the Atlantic Alliance that ultimately won the war against Hitler. In this careful, step-by-step review of the negotiations leading to the accord, Shogan argues that ``in implementing the destroyer deal, Roosevelt followed a pattern of manipulation and concealment'' that breached his trust as president. The author also contends that Roosevelt's pursuit of a policy he knew to be unacceptable to the isolationist American public and contrary to the Walsh Amendment, which restricted transfers of military matÇriel abroad, set a precedent for the postwar buildup of excessive presidential power. Shogan (The Riddle of Power, 1991, etc.) draws a convincing portrait of a chief executive determined on the one hand to get the best bargain he could for the United States (without excessive regard for legal niceties) and on the other to help Britain while avoiding any overt entanglement with the war effort during a crucial election year. In the end, as Shogan points out, Roosevelt presented Congress with a fait accompli. The author might have noted the emergency nature of Britain's plight, however, and the fact that other presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, took actions of similarly questionable legality during national crises. A detailed and absorbing analysis, although not all readers will agree with Shogan's critical view of FDR's actions and his tracing of modern presidential abuses to the destroyers-for-bases accord.

Pub Date: April 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-689-12160-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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