the truth. (2 maps, 44 b&w photos, not seen)
Two veteran investigative reporters (Dragon Lady, 1992, etc.) assail several generations of Japan’s first family with the
deadliest weapons of all: research and keen analysis. This is not a pleasant tale. Beginning their story with the first postwar meeting between General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito on September 27, 1945, the Seagraves quickly establish a rather startling conclusion: "Money—not Shinto—is the state religion of Japan," where the various financial powers "milk [the country] like a cash cow." The picture grows only darker as the Seagraves shine their lights more brightly. They tell of unimaginable wealth and privilege (Yoshihito, who came to power in 1912, was the "first crown prince ever taught to dress himself"), about internecine struggles to pick the spouse of the emperor, about shadowy, enormously powerful figures in the background—bankers, industrialists—who manipulate both the imperial family and international events with the venal intent of enriching themselves and securing Japan’s prominence. Most alarming for American readers are the chapters dealing with WWII. The Seagraves cite "emerging" evidence that in 1941 both US and British officials knew in advance of the imminent attack at Pearl Harbor and did nothing: the desperate British needed US intervention, and the Roosevelt administration needed to mobilize prowar public opinion. The Seagraves describe the massive, desperate efforts of "Golden Lily," code name for the clandestine (and largely effective) Japanese operation to hide from Allied officials the billions of dollars of gold and other treasures the Japanese had plundered in the early years of the war—on a scale that has "never been seen before in human history." In addition, the Seagraves describe the reprehensible (and successful) efforts of MacArthur and other American officials to ensure that no member of the imperial family ever appeared before any war-crimes tribunal. A deeply disturbing chronicle of pervasive corruption and greed—of unspeakable violence visited upon people, values, and
the truth. (2 maps, 44 b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7679-0496-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.
A ground-level illustration of how the plague ravaged Europe.
For his tenth book, science writer Kelly (Three on the Edge, 1999, etc.) delivers a cultural history of the Black Death based on accounts left by those who witnessed the greatest natural disaster in human history. Spawned somewhere on the steppes of Central Asia, the plague arrived in Europe in 1347, when a Genoese ship carried it to Sicily from a trading post on the Black Sea. Over the next four years, at a time when, as the author notes, “nothing moved faster than the fastest horse,” the disease spread through the entire continent. Eventually, it claimed 25 million lives, one third of the European population. A thermonuclear war would be an equivalent disaster by today's standards, Kelly avers. Much of the narrative depends on the reminiscences of monks, doctors, and other literate people who buried corpses or cared for the sick. As a result, the author has plenty of anecdotes. Common scenes include dogs and children running naked, dirty, and wild through the streets of an empty village, their masters and parents dead; Jews burnt at the stake, scapegoats in a paranoid Christian world; and physicians at the University of Paris consulting the stars to divine cures. These tales give the author opportunities to show Europeans—filthy, malnourished, living in densely packed cities—as easy targets for rats and their plague-bearing fleas. They also allow him to ramble. Kelly has a tendency to lose the trail of the disease in favor of tangents about this or that king, pope, or battle. He returns to his topic only when he shifts to a different country or city in a new chapter, giving the book a haphazard feel. Remarkably, the story ends on a hopeful note. After so many perished, Europe was forced to develop new forms of technology to make up for the labor shortage, laying the groundwork for the modern era.
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000692-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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