A long read, superficially researched and amateurishly written.
Mirza reinterprets 500 years of world history in pursuit of the truth behind the rise and fall of the “American Empire.”
Beginning with the 16th Century, Mirza painstakingly revisits the myriad landmark moments that collectively contributed to the evolution, hegemony and ultimate demise of the “world’s super imperialist” power–the United States. The author argues not that the country no longer exists, but rather that its power, moral authority and philosophical tradition of representative democracy have all diminished to the point of impotence. The path from Viking and Chinese discoveries of the New World, to the challenges of modern-day terrorism and global financial collapses is a long and circuitous one. He diligently follows the chronological timeline through the ages, recounting historical milestones familiar to any high school senior but offers an analysis that amounts to little more than an historical review. Readers will be hard pressed to find the theoretical argument that unites all this history to Mirza’s ultimate thesis. The author’s passion and sincerity for his topic are beyond question, but the history lesson gets lost in the meandering CliffsNotes-like historical summary. The book’s message is further weakened by a text that is poorly edited and beleaguered by awkward sentences, poor grammar, worse punctuation and numerous style gaffes. Readers are so busy stumbling over errors that the meaning fades into the background. This is unfortunate, because Mirza has something important to say about our world, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to build his case objectively. The Rise and Fall of the American Empire rings a clarion call we should take seriously, but that call is drowned out by the white noise of poor editorial mechanics and a weakly formulated thesis.
A long read, superficially researched and amateurishly written.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4251-1383-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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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