A solid chronicle for World War II reference collections.
A British historian’s look at one of the less-familiar actions on the European front in World War II.
Cross (The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler’s Last Hope, 2014, etc.) begins in the war’s early years, when it became clear that the United States would join its European allies to roll back the German conquests. But while the broad principle was clear enough, Winston Churchill thought the attack should go through the Balkans while the Americans and the Soviets argued for southern France. In consequence, the invasion, originally scheduled for right after the Normandy landings in June, was delayed until mid-August, when British, American, and French forces came ashore near St. Tropez on the Mediterranean coast. At first, opposition was minimal; the Germans’ main forces were already committed in the north and in Russia. Eventually, American forces, trying to cut off the German line of retreat, went through tough battles near the towns of Valence and Lyon. In the end, they reached the German border, though much battered, and the Allied armies joined up for the final push into the enemy homeland. Cross enlivens the story with colorful anecdotes, such as the tale of American soldiers following what they thought was one of their own tanks on a nighttime patrol only to discover at daylight that it was a German Panzer. The author also highlights many interesting characters, notably Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated American soldiers of the war. Cross gives detailed accounts of the units engaged in each action, with plentiful quotes from the commanders on both sides. But while the details of all the units that took part in each skirmish will fascinate many military history buffs, they will put off more casual readers. Readers without an intimate knowledge of French geography may need to supplement their reading with a detailed map; the maps included in the volume don’t show some frequently mentioned sites, such as Dijon.
A solid chronicle for World War II reference collections.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68177-860-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
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
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