Readers who are looking for an answer to Cornwell may find this book helpful; those who have followed the controversy about...
Ever since the appearance of Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy in 1963, the role of Pope Pius XII during the WWII has been a subject of heated controversy, a controversy that has intensified in recent years as the Vatican proceeds with the investigation that may eventually lead to his beatification. Rychlak (Law/Univ. of Mississippi) here presents a defense of the pontiff.
The first third of the book offers a look at the early careers of Pius XII and Hitler, the situation of the Catholic church in the postwar world, the uneasy relations between the papacy and the governments of a united Italy that culminated in the Lateran Treaty, the rise of Nazism, and the negotiations that led to the 1933 concordat between Germany and the Vatican. The remaining two-thirds is largely made up of a review of the events of the war years, the statements and actions of the pope, and the reactions to them by the Allies, the Axis, and Jewish and humanitarian organizations. The last chapter considers questions frequently asked about Pius and his behavior during the war. Was he an anti-Semite? Would a statement from Pius have diminished Jewish suffering? Should he have excommunicated Hitler? An epilogue contains a detailed refutation of John Cornwell’s controversial study Hitler’s Pope (1999, not reviewed). On every count, Rychlak finds the case against Pius wanting. Rychlak says that “to evaluate [Pius’s] performance, one must begin by looking at all of the evidence in context,” and so he has surrounded Pius’s story with details that will be familiar to many readers and are of arguable relevance to a judgment on Pius. Even in the context Rychlak provides, some of the more serious charges (such as Pius’s reaction to the Nazi roundup of Jews of Rome in October 1943) remain disturbing; others (like the alleged assistance the church gave to fugitive war criminals) are disposed of in passing.
Readers who are looking for an answer to Cornwell may find this book helpful; those who have followed the controversy about Pius XII will find little new here.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58571-006-7
Page Count: 548
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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