by Verne W. Newton ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1991
It is remarkable that, as the publisher claims, no comprehensive assessment—utilizing information derived under the Freedom of Information Act—of the espionage activities in the US of British spies Maclean, Philby, and Burgess has appeared from an American source until the publication of this book. It is all the more remarkable, even for those who have followed the story closely, in that this account by Newton, a former State Department executive, calls for a considerable revision in our understanding of the period following WW II. For more than four years, Newton reports, Donald Maclean, regarded as one of the stars of the British Foreign Office, was at the center of Anglo-American efforts to coordinate opposition to Stalin. At critical moments—during the period when the Soviet Union was acting with almost inexplicable boldness in Eastern Europe—he was thus in a position to assure Stalin that the US had virtually no atomic bombs in its arsenal. During the Korean War, he passed on the information that the US had taken the decision not to use atomic weapons except in the most extreme circumstances— information that could have been critical in China's decision to intervene. By comparison, the damage done by Philby and Burgess was much less important. Nobody emerges well from this narrative: as Newton notes, in the cover-up the British withheld information from the Americans, the CIA from the FBI, the FBI from the State Department, and the Atomic Energy Commission from all the others and from Congress as well. We are inevitably left with questions that may never be answered—for example, why the Soviets allowed Burgess, a drunken, indiscreet, promiscuous homosexual, to blow Philby's cover—but this account provides us with the fullest and most perceptive analysis of an important phase in Soviet espionage. (Eight pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8191-8059-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
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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 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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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