A detailed, compelling account of a little-known chapter in the Iraq War.
In this modern war memoir, a retired Army colonel recounts his experiences working to suppress terrorism in a strategic Iraqi city.
Deane recounts his deployment to Ramadi in 2006, when it was known as the “most dangerous city in the world,” and how he and his men helped to turn it into what he calls “the safest city in Iraq” by the time U.S. troops pulled out of the country. Already a Desert Storm veteran with more than a decade of Army experience, he and the other soldiers faced numerous obstacles at the beginning of their deployment, from frequent suicide bombings to the distrust of the local leaders, whose help they needed to find al-Qaida operatives. Deane describes the slow, painstaking work of convincing local sheiks to support the new democratic government and of helping them to create an all-Iraqi city police force. He also highlights the complicated nature of securing allies across cultural barriers in a war that weaponized propaganda as much as grenades. But apart from vivid descriptions of combat and of the many casualties suffered by the U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies, the book keeps a mostly optimistic tone as it focuses on the successful joint efforts of American and local forces to make the city a safer place. It’s also illustrated with color photos of many of the people and places described. For the most part, Deane’s prose is clear, simple, and free of political soapboxing or unwarranted boasting. He acknowledges his mistakes and those of other U.S. troops while also holding to his book’s thesis, which claims that their operations had a positive impact on Ramadi and Iraq as a whole, despite their negative portrayal in the American news media. Small grammatical errors, such as the redundant “$500 bucks,” litter the narrative, and readers without military experience may get bogged down in the often untranslated Army terminology. However, the war’s historical background is well-researched, as are the back stories of many prominent players.
A detailed, compelling account of a little-known chapter in the Iraq War.Pub Date: May 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943052-07-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Cleveland Writers Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 Yorker staff 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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