A seasoned historian delivers a fluently readable history.
A clearly delineated thesis that examines the decisive battles in turning back the Axis powers of World War II.
Using comparative examples of the Union-won battles that shattered the Confederacy in 1864, Brooks (Education and Counseling/Villanova Univ.; Hell Is Upon Us: D-Day in the Pacific, 2005, etc.) finds in the long months of 1944 the important battles that would eventually defeat the Germans and the Japanese in turn, including the iconic Operation Overlord in Normandy and the equally important, less-well-known campaign of arduous Pacific island-hopping to dislodge the Japanese imperial army in the Marianas, Operation Forager. As a historian who delights in relaying his research and expertise, Brooks unravels the story with accessible detail for lay readers so that his work feels less like a history lesson than a suspenseful drama. The squabbles among the top military high command—a wonderful clash of brash male personalities, including that of the president himself—eventually gave way to some sound decisions. In discrete, tidy chapters Brooks takes one chronological portion of the “longest year” and breaks it down: the January attack on “the soft underbelly of Europe” via the Italian beaches at Anzio and Nettuno; the beginning destruction of the German aircraft industry and control of the skies in preparation for Operation Overlord over the “Big Week” of aerial dogfights in February; the “invasion” of the Yanks in Britain in preparation for Overlord and the massive launch in June; and the hugely costly campaigns on the Pacific islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, which were met by the stunning surge of suicidal imperial warriors. While the taking of Paris and “redemption” at Leyte, Philippines, crowned the year, the Germans and Japanese proved they were still not down for the count.
A seasoned historian delivers a fluently readable history.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63144-023-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Carrel/Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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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