A pointed case study in unintended consequences—in this case, of the war against drugs spilling out into civil war, and vice versa.
In Colombia, write journalist Bruce (No Apparent Danger: The True Story of Volcanic Disaster at Galeras and Nevado del Ruiz, 2001), documentary filmmaker Hayes and Colombian native and reporter Botero, a four-decade–long Marxist insurgency grew in strength and wealth as a direct consequence of “the disastrous multibillion-dollar plan to wage war on an herbaceous shrub, Erythroxylum coca,” the plant that gives us cocaine. Their story begins with three American contractors working to eradicate the shrub with a toxic airborne defoliant and being shot out of the sky for their troubles, landing not just in FARC guerrilla territory but also in the gaps between bureaucracies. Had the plane crash occurred elsewhere, U.S. military forces might have intervened and rescued the crew, but Colombia was the State Department’s beat. More than five years of captivity ensued for the contractors, largely forgotten by all but their families, and certainly by the American press. Meanwhile, by the authors’ account, FARC continued to grow, drawing on urban middle-class theoreticians and peasant fighters alike, and seized turf not just from the government but also from Colombia’s homegrown drug mafia. By the mid-’90s, Bill Clinton was calling the Marxists “narco-guerrillas.” Though their leaders protested that the revolutionaries “could eradicate coca production in three to five years with crop-substitution programs if supplied with economic aid from the government and international organizations,” the drug trade continued to grow. Moreover, for complex and maddening reasons, every time the U.S. government threw more money at the problem, the drug trade expanded even farther. Billions of dollars have now been spent on the so-called War on Drugs—a phrase that the Obama administration has officially retired—including three billion dropped in the five years that the three Americans were held captive. Meanwhile, American contractors and soldiers still swarm in Colombia, while the drug trade shows no signs of slowing down. Of gang after gang that can’t shoot straight, but still find ample market for their wares in an ever-hungry Norte—fuel for the fires of the legalization movement.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-27115-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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 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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