A tough and vivid account of war and redemption.
In this no-nonsense chronicle of life inside Abu Ghraib prison, first-time author Griffith describes the aftermath of the abuse scandal and the soldiers stationed there afterward.
Most enlistees in the 152nd Field Artillery Battalion never expected to leave the United States, much less serve in Iraq. Yet suddenly, in early 2004, these members of the Maine National Guard were dispatched to Abu Ghraib prison. Former Marine Corps combat correspondent Griffith describes constant confusion as they struggled to find their equipment when they first arrived and failed to understand why an artillery unit should guard prisoners of war. Worst of all, they took command of Abu Ghraib shortly after photos of torture victims incited global outrage. Griffith focuses on a handful of servicemen, but his protagonist is William Thorndike, known to everyone as “Dizl.” From the first pages, Dizl seems mature and wise, capable of bringing a fresh perspective to an ugly environment. “Overall, Dizl thought, there was something slap-dash and contingent about Abu Ghraib,” writes the author. “It reminded him less of a functioning detention center than a semi-successful refugee camp thrown up in the first few weeks after a disaster.” Griffith’s writing is energetic and conversational. He takes pains to illustrate the wartime experience, describing how bullets actually tear through bodies, how time slows down during bombardment, and what soldiers talk about during endless days in brutal heat. Even as vengeful insurgents showered the prison with mortar and rocket fire, Dizl and his comrades attempted to improve the filthy living conditions at Abu Ghraib. The author ably describes the delicate relationship between the Iraqi prisoners and their overworked captors. He expresses admiration for the soldiers and their courage, but he also lambastes the Iraqi invasion and all the damage it caused. Veterans like Dizl did a lot of admirable things, Griffith asserts, but at what cost?
A tough and vivid account of war and redemption.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62872-645-9
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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