An important book for policymakers and those interested in the continuing, depressingly widespread instances of gun violence.
A freelance journalist who worked at the Richmond Times-Dispatch for 28 years seeks the answer to an important question: “Could the [2007 Virginia] Tech killings change how people think about gun violence in Virginia and, by extension, the rest of the nation?”
On April 16, 2007, Kapsidelis was dispatched to the Virginia Tech campus, responding to reports of a shooting. In his first book, the author discloses what he saw that day, which included 32 students and faculty members dead, many others physically wounded, and countless emotionally traumatized. As he learned more about the perpetrator, senior Seung-Hui Cho, Kapsidelis cataloged the warning signs that he should have been in counseling and certainly should have been barred from procuring weapons. One of the most puzzling aspects of the killing spree was how the gunman was able to murder two students at a dormitory in the early morning hours, escape undetected, and then enter another campus building hours later to murder 30 more. Furthermore, why did university officials fail to alert students, faculty, and staff about possible danger after learning about the dormitory murders? Although Kapsidelis’ account of the violence is well-researched and clearly written, his book’s major accomplishment is the author’s exploration of the healing process, which he indicates in the subtitle. Too many accounts of murderous rampages fail to offer long-term insights into the trauma faced by survivors, but Kapsidelis provides useful information on the topic, including discussions of “gun violence as a health issue.” The author’s cast of characters is large, which may make the account difficult to follow for some readers; ultimately, though, the broad cast makes the narrative deeper and more profound. An unexpected strength is the focus on Virginia’s governor at the time, Tim Kaine.
An important book for policymakers and those interested in the continuing, depressingly widespread instances of gun violence.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8139-4222-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Univ. of Virginia
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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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