A book that sheds needed light on the complexities of South Asian geopolitics.
Spirited history of the multiple divisions India has endured, just one of them the split with Pakistan.
The old chestnut that you can see the Great Wall of China from space is untrue, writes Scottish historian Dalrymple in his opening pages. However, he adds, “the border wall dividing India from Pakistan is unmistakable,” running 2,000-odd miles and bristling with floodlights and landmines. This was not the case until the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Just a century ago, Dalrymple writes, the Indian Empire, or Raj, extended to the Arabian Peninsula to the west and eastward to Burma. Then came 1937, when a movement within India to create a Hindu state and another movement on the part of the majority Bamar people led to the creation of Burma. In 1947, the states of the Arabian Peninsula began to calve off, with Britain gradually ceding colonial control over the Persian Gulf states. Within India, separatist movements created de facto states based on religious affiliation. And in 1971, when Britain’s protectorate rule over the Persian Gulf ended, Bangladesh separated from Pakistan, bringing on a bloody civil war. Britain’s cession wasn’t benevolently inspired, Dalrymple notes; in 1971, a fiscal crisis at home meant that “Britain could no longer afford the annual £12 million that it spent on keeping its forces in the region.” Whatever the case, he adds, what had been a single superstate broke into 12 nations with very different agendas, despite the efforts of Burma’s first president and his Indian counterparts to forge a South Asian federation. That history has been forgotten, willfully, everywhere in the former Raj: “In every single one of these countries, governments have made sure to paper over the shared cross-border heritage of their peoples.” The result, this ably written history shows, is ethnic division, the suppression of minorities, war—and, yes, that border wall.
A book that sheds needed light on the complexities of South Asian geopolitics.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781324123781
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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