by Sharon Weinberger ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2017
Given the complications of writing a comprehensive book about an octopuslike agency, Weinberger handles the material well....
A journey through “the agency responsible for some of the most important military and civil technologies of the past hundred years.”
Intercept security editor Weinberger (Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon’s Scientific Underworld, 2006, etc.) again sets her sights on the Department of Defense, combining historical context with a focus on waste, fraud, and abuse in one realm of the gigantic government agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, often referred to by its acronym DARPA. Cobbled together in 1958 in the aftermath of Cold War panic that the Soviet Union had launched the Sputnik satellite, the original DARPA personnel felt uncertain about their mission. The already established military services of the Army, Navy, and Air Force seemed to overlap with DARPA’s amorphous mandate. Should a military agency control the government’s rush to match or surpass the Sputnik launch? (At that time, NASA had not yet been created.) Weinberger traces how the pieces fell into place, focusing first on a detailed history of William Godel, a former military member who remained in government as a negotiator with foreign leaders. Godel’s previously low profile receives a boost from Weinberger, a tireless researcher. The ascension of Godel leads to the crispest narrative in the book; after he exits, the story loses steam due to his many successors and the many disparate projects that ended up in DARPA’s jurisdiction. Some of those projects led, at least indirectly, to the valuable creation of the nonmilitary internet plus brilliant devices that could detect tests of nuclear weapons by foreign nations. But when DARPA personnel became deeply involved in strategies to fight insurgent wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the agency waded into controversial waters that caused damage to its standing within the Pentagon.
Given the complications of writing a comprehensive book about an octopuslike agency, Weinberger handles the material well. At times, though, the reading feels like parsing a government agency annual report.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-35179-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Share your opinion of this book
More by Nathan Hodge
BOOK REVIEW
by Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.