Tough-minded and thus more inspirational than the usual worshipful chronicle of brave soldiers in battle.
Lively account of an inept National Guard battalion that pulled itself together, went to Iraq and performed heroically.
Eulogized in a 1940 film with James Cagney, “The Fighting 69th” fought with distinction from the Civil War to World War II, but by the 1990s, reclassified as National Guard, it had declined significantly. Former company commander Flynn (Land of Radioactive Midnight: A Cheechako’s First Year in Alaska, 2003) draws a vivid picture of his Manhattan-based unit’s disgraceful state as the 21st century began. Members treated meetings as a chance to party. Alcohol and drugs flowed freely. Many officers were old, incompetent or simply uninterested. State commanders overlooked the lack of discipline in an effort to keep the already depleted 69th from losing more men. Despite this apathy, on 9/11 hundreds rushed to the armory without being summoned, sacrificing jobs and personal convenience to help out. When the 69th received orders to deploy to Iraq, its leaders knew it was unfit for combat, and the subsequent hasty training did not improve matters. However, after the men took over pacification efforts in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood in October 2004, the motley group of amateur soldiers transformed themselves into battle-hardened professionals. Flynn becomes surprisingly sophisticated and even politically incorrect in his descriptions of how they learned on the job. Sunni and Shia Iraqis hated each other more than they hated Americans. Men of the 69th showed no love for either group and came perilously close to taking revenge on civilians when comrades were killed. Roadside and car bombs inflicted massive casualties, so pacification involved nerve-wracking patrols, perpetual suspicion and frequent raids on homes during which public relations became a low priority. Yet the 69th succeeded. Area commanders delivered praise; local Iraqis showed gratitude. Sadly, Flynn reminds us, successful counterinsurgency requires units to “clear, hold, and build.” The 69th did not stay long enough to “hold,” and rebuilding did not happen, so insurgents returned once the soldiers departed.
Tough-minded and thus more inspirational than the usual worshipful chronicle of brave soldiers in battle.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-01843-7
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007
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 Yorker staff 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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