The story is as compelling as it is fantastic—page-turning history of one of the most important eras of Western civilization.
The husband-and-wife historian team once again exhibit their talent for enlivening British history.
This time, the Adkins writing team (Jane Austen’s England, 2013, etc.) looks at the 1779-1783 siege of Gibraltar, which, at three years and seven months, was the longest siege in British history and played a significant role in the success of the American Revolution. As America’s ally, France declared war on England and enlisted Spain to join them in attempting an invasion of Britain. After that plan failed, the next step was to take the most strategic spot in the Mediterranean, Gibraltar. Protecting the rock and rebuffing convoy attempts to resupply it took thousands of men, ships, and armaments desperately needed across the Atlantic. Many of those convoys never made it to Gibraltar, intercepted by Spanish or French fleets. As English Adm. George Darby initiated a relief convoy, it enabled the French commander to slip away and arrive in time to be the deciding factor in the capitulation at Yorktown. Many readers will wonder why this episode hasn’t been made into a movie, with all the heroics of soldiers, civilians, and, especially, families. Thankfully, the authors had a vast trove of letters and diaries of those who lived through the siege, and they use them to great effect. The most telling is that of the wife of Gibraltar’s chief engineer, William Green. She describes what might be called the phony war, as Spain tried to starve out the garrison and engaged in near-incessant bombardment. They paused only briefly each afternoon, for siesta. The inhabitants of Gibraltar fought hunger, typhus, and smallpox in addition to abject fear. During the seemingly interminable siege, both sides came up with new and deadly inventions: English exploding shells, a forerunner of shrapnel, gunboats, and French floating batteries. Equally notable is one of the most famous sorties in military history.
The story is as compelling as it is fantastic—page-turning history of one of the most important eras of Western civilization.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2162-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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