A well-documented, brave, and useful overview.
A journey through the Middle East in the post–Arab Spring landscape.
A journalist and RAND Corporation research manager in Qatar, American-born Culbertson (Education of Syrian Refugee Children: Managing the Crisis in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, 2015, etc.) traveled recently to six Middle East countries she believes are most indicative of the vast changes taking place in the region since the political upheavals in 2011. Tunisia was the catalyst when in January of that year, the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi ignited national unrest, and a true revolution then convulsed Egypt with the overthrow of a long-running dictator. The author’s curious choice of non-Arab Turkey underscores the profound and unsettling changes in the region that mirror the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Indeed, she posits, the struggle for the formation of legitimate nation-states began then, accompanied by “a troubled story of population swaps, ethnic cleansing, iron-fisted dictators, civil wars, and popular backlash,” all establishing a pattern similar to what is occurring in these countries today. After presenting an overview of observations about the region as a whole—including the emphasis on the region’s diversity, the struggle to delineate Islam’s role in government, balancing the modern versus the past, the emancipation of women, and the inclusion of the overwhelming youthful demographic—Culbertson takes a deep look at each country in turn and asks the people involved what the revolution achieved for them. The answers vary widely: Egypt, having slipped back into dictatorship, is the bad example, and yet Egyptian women are leading the way in demanding change; Tunisia remains the imperfect model for reconciling the secular and the religious; Iraq, beset by the Islamic State group, threatens to splinter; entrepreneurial Jordan has proven surprisingly stable despite its massive refugee crisis; and Qatar, the wealthiest of the lot, is meddlesome and interventionist. Authoritarianism continues to strangle the region and its emerging institutions, and Culbertson follows it all with aplomb.
A well-documented, brave, and useful overview.Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-06704-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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