Fresh research drives this scholarly study of the complex blend of Yalta’s personalities and ideas.
An astute reappraisal of the Yalta Conference.
The Big Three—Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin—met under heavily guarded, secret conditions over eight days in February 1945 to establish a blueprint of geopolitical interests for the anticipated peace after World War II. Churchill was eager to preserve British “spheres of influences” in Europe from Soviet Communism; Franklin Roosevelt, in faltering health, was insistent on securing Soviet cooperation in a world peace organization and a democratic government in Poland; Joseph Stalin wanted to preserve the new territorial borders granted under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. The war in Europe had turned, due largely to the Russian thrust against the Germans, and the Soviets had already taken Bucharest, Sofia, Budapest and Belgrade and were headed for Berlin. The Western allies were alarmed about the Communist takeover of Eastern Europe. Subjects to be wrangled among the diplomats included the winter military offensive; Germany’s “dismemberment”; a “bombline” defining aerial operations; the cost of Soviet participation in the war in the Pacific; the division of the Balkans; and the ultimate sellout of Poland. Above all, FDR desired to remain “on friendly footing” with Stalin, even if Churchill was frequently slighted. With the onset of the Cold War, the Americans paid the price for their amiable legitimizing of Soviet concerns. Enlisting documents from all sides—there was no official record kept of the conference, and the Soviets had the Livadia Palace effectively bugged—Plokhy (Harvard Univ.; The Origins of the Slavic Nations, 2006, etc.) gets at the secret dealmaking and shades of deceit present at the conference. High expectations for the “spirit of Yalta” in both the West and East collapsed into mutual suspicion soon after Roosevelt’s death, and the author effectively addresses the fateful aftermath.
Fresh research drives this scholarly study of the complex blend of Yalta’s personalities and ideas.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02141-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2009
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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