A technically accurate, opinionated accounting of unforgettable winners and losers.
A complicated history of one of the world’s most prestigious honors.
Turrettini delves into the weird nebula of secrecy, dogma, politics, and pressure surrounding the Nobel Peace Prize, first awarded in 1901. Given the praiseworthy work of many of the laureates—e.g., Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jr., Linus Pauling, Jane Addams, Elie Wiesel, and Mother Teresa—one might think the honor is unassailable. But the author shows the controversial history of some of the prizewinners (see: Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, or Aung San Suu Kyi) as well as the many deviations from the construct that its creator, Alfred Nobel, envisioned. Many still find it curious that Nobel was interested in awarding a prize for the amorphous concept of peace among other categories such as physics, chemistry, and medicine. Certainly, the awards have attracted much controversy, even in recent years—e.g., President Barack Obama’s 2009 award, given “in a hope for what he might accomplish.” The author, who is unafraid to point out the shortcomings of many of her subjects, admits that Nobel left significant flexibility for interpretation: The prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” In addition to examining some of the “tarnished” reputations involved with the prize, the author also explores the inherent sexism in the process—despite the fact that Nobel was influenced greatly by the peace activist Bertha von Suttner. Among the more intriguing tidbits: Five-time nominee Gandhi never won the award, and Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Putin have all been nominees. Michael Nobel, the former chairman of the Nobel Family Society, provides the foreword, and the book also includes the text of Alfred Nobel’s will.
A technically accurate, opinionated accounting of unforgettable winners and losers.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64313-564-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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
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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