Journalism that demonstrates all the arguments why we need professionals to tell the stories that mark our generations and a...
In a remarkable work of narrative journalism, Boston Globe journalists Helman (co-author: The Real Romney, 2012) and Russell (co-author: Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy, 2009), with support from their comrades at the Globe’s news department, map out the heartbreaks, dogged pursuits and courageous acts of defiance that resulted from one of America’s most foolhardy and cowardly acts of terrorism.
Most readers will remember the shock and awe that emerged when two improvised explosive devices—pressure cookers outfitted with nails and other fierce forms of shrapnel—ripped apart the crowds at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. The authors could have chosen to focus on the single-minded manhunt by the FBI and the Boston police department, which ultimately killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and arrested his younger brother Dzhokhar with grievous gunshot wounds, and their story is told here with fine reportage. But instead of closing the book with the arrest, the authors tell the story of the event through very human eyes. They include the stories of marathon organizer Dave McGillivray, who was helpless to maintain control, and Heather Abbott, one of more than a dozen people to lose limbs in the bombing. There were three people killed during the bombing, here represented by the family of Krystle Campbell, a young woman whose case of mistaken identity worsened one family’s awful grief. Many of the scenes are heart-wrenching, but it’s worth getting through, as the book portrays a defiant Boston, resilient victims, and the determination of a community that two naïve, dimwitted youths will never strike enough fear into a city that it won’t rise again.
Journalism that demonstrates all the arguments why we need professionals to tell the stories that mark our generations and a valentine to the people that proved Boston Strong.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-525-95448-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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