by Tatyana Elmanovich ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2018
While it delivers an enticing glimpse of the past and the afterlife, this account becomes convoluted at times.
A semiautobiographical work explores one woman’s ancestors and Russian history.
As Elmanovich (In Eternity, 2015, etc.) asserts at the outset, the pages that follow are based on recordings of her conversations with ghosts. The author, born to a Russian family living in Estonia, settled in the United States at the age of 55. Now in her 80s, she is a medium able to “hear voices of spirits and angels.” The specters in this collection tend to be deceased family members, some of whom Elmanovich never met while they were living. All have a connection to Russia and Estonia. There is the author’s Aunt Tatyana, who died at 11 and explains the reasons for her death. Elmanovich’s Uncle Jurik speaks from beyond the grave about the World War II siege of Leningrad. Her maternal grandmother, Anna, with the aid of a spirit helper named Hildegard, explains the circumstances of a horrendous marriage. The ghosts do not merely speak of the earthly realm. They have much to say about the “4D astral world” and some of it is surprising. For instance, cocaine is used by some in the afterlife to alleviate their woes. As one user explains, “Narcotics lift me to another vibration for a while.” An afterlife pregnancy even proves to be a possibility. Throughout the book, there are also bits and pieces of the author’s own life. She is a former film critic whose decades of experience have taught her that all people are flawed. As she explained to her brother, “Ideal people do not exist in reality.” Elmanovich’s ambitious work covers a wide range of material in a fairly small amount of pages. A family history of the Bolshevik Revolution, existence in an astral world, and the difficulties of coming to America are captivating topics that could each fill a volume. The variety of intriguing subjects provides much to take in, though the interweaving can be clumsy. No sooner are readers told of the terror brought upon civilians by Kronstadt sailors in revolutionary Russia than shortly thereafter they learn of a Korean War veteran named Jose Martinez, a clairvoyant who died before his 60th birthday of a drug overdose. And though the many pieces are sometimes jumbled or wild (astral world narcotics?), the book presents a number of potent points even for the skeptical. For example, discussing the horrors of Leningrad is no simple matter for a spirit like Jurik. The work explains how survivors know that their words will “never reach their listeners’ mind and emotions completely” because those without direct experience cannot fully appreciate what happened. Nevertheless, Jurik’s tales still have much to tell the audience. Similarly, readers may want to know more of the author’s story. Her abilities as a medium are stated as matter-of-factly as her arrival in America. But what does it fully mean to be a medium? When and how did she know she had this ability? The book ultimately covers a multitude of topics yet it leaves a host of unanswered questions.
While it delivers an enticing glimpse of the past and the afterlife, this account becomes convoluted at times.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
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
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