For general history readers who want to delve deeper into the relationships among the WWII leaders, and those whose...
A chronicle of the political intrigues and interactions between Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Charles de Gaulle during the crisis years of WWII.
Writing a companion to his joint BBC/PBS television series of the same name, producer Berthon presents a printed compilation of his historical research. He opens his argument by suggesting that de Gaulle’s vision of himself as a Joan of Arc figure destined to redeem France from its quick military capitulation to the Nazi regime directly conflicted with Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s attempts to construct a coalition capable of defeating the German forces. Berthon shows how Churchill admired de Gaulle’s quixotic refusal to accept the political authority of the Hitler-friendly Vichy government and embraced him as a true French patriot. He also demonstrates how Roosevelt pursued a conflicting policy of recognizing the Vichy government in hopes that strong American support would pull its leaders away from Hitler. Berthon reveals Churchill’s consternation at being torn between de Gaulle, whose spirit he genuinely admired, and Roosevelt, whose military support he needed even more dramatically. He details how de Gaulle, out of a sense of righteous French outrage, stubbornly refused to subordinate himself to the great Anglo-Saxon powers and shrewdly established his political power in the grassroots of the French underground. This mutual exasperation among Churchill, Roosevelt, and de Gaulle, Berthon ultimately argues, established a basic distrust that would weaken France’s relationship with the English-speaking powers in the aftermath of the war.
For general history readers who want to delve deeper into the relationships among the WWII leaders, and those whose appetites are whetted by the TV series. (8 pages b&w photos)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0949-9
Page Count: 356
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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
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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