A furious indictment of the institutional power and sanctimony that enable moral atrocities.
A sex-abuse scandal at an African orphanage raises thorny moral questions about duty and complicity in this searing exposé.
Neill recaps his involvement with Kenya’s Nyumbani Children’s Home (called “Rainbow Children’s Home” in the book), a well-regarded, church-associated shelter and medical treatment center for HIV-positive orphans where he worked in the early 2000s. In 2019, he joined the charity’s U.S. board of directors and conducted a survey of the orphanage’s alumni, which unearthed alarming reports of child molestation. The crimes included many allegations of sexual abuse of children perpetrated by Simon Wood, a British Airways pilot who volunteered at the home; various seminarians and priests; and other boys who lived there. The abuse was mainly covered up, the author contends, by Nyumbani’s cofounder and director (whom he calls by the pseudonym “Sister Fenella”) and by staff members, who often blamed girls for having incited attacks. After the board responded to Neill’s report with denial and stonewalling, the author went to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which cut off funding to Nyumbani, and helped Washington Post reporter Rael Ombuor write an investigative piece. Neill mounts a cutting critique of Nyumbani, charging Sister Fenella and the nuns who ran the home (called “SCABs”) with harsh treatment of kids, inadequate medical care that contributed to the deaths of two children, and a failure to support troubled Nyumbani alumni. The book is also an anguished meditation on how self-regard, white saviorism, and the adulation of “rock star-saints” like Sister Fenella can blind well-meaning people to malfeasance and injustice. Neill writes in scathing, passionate prose that packs an emotional wallop. (“Anika spent her last night on this Earth in my arms, writhing in pain or in a shallow sleep from inadequate analgesics…. So, when I learned the news that Kimbery had also died of meningitis and that the [nuns] had the opportunity to vaccinate the children but didn’t, I was incandescent with rage.”) The result is a compelling takedown of the ethical rot that can eat away at unaccountable charities.
A furious indictment of the institutional power and sanctimony that enable moral atrocities.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798310577954
Page Count: 247
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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