by Walter Laqueur & Christopher Wall ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 3, 2018
Of considerable interest to the geopolitically inclined, as are all of Laqueur’s many books.
The dean of terrorism studies (Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West, 2015, etc.) examines trends in Islamist and alt-right acts of political violence.
There is good news in Laqueur’s prognosis, including the absence of another tsunami event like 9/11. For one thing, he notes, most acts of political terrorism occur in just five countries, and the number of victims is some 40 times less than that of heart attack victims. Still, he writes, that’s 18,000 people per year—“17,958, to be precise,” in 2013. Laqueur looks at his subject through the lens of the overall decline in violence that has so cheered Steven Pinker of late before getting into the meat of the matter: Terrorism is successful where government is faltering. “Terrorism,” he writes, “is not an exogenous feature of the modern nation-state but rather a symptom of bad governance.” In that light, the growth of alt-right violence has not yet blossomed into full-fledged terrorism in the United States, but the ingredients are there, including dog whistles from the sitting president. As the author notes, the alt-right shares with Islamism the call for “a homogenous society that absolutely rejects outsiders,” a view that is wider spread in a time of rampant nationalism; it wouldn’t take much to tip a certain element of followers from race-hate rhetoric to armed action. As for Islamism, Laqueur argues that the Trump administration is feeding right into the narrative of the U.S. as a “crusader” power through such blunders as pushing to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, maligning and discriminating against Muslims with a broad brush, and otherwise subscribing to the discredited “clash of civilizations” thesis. The bad news, then, is that while political violence may be lessening, it won’t disappear anytime soon.
Of considerable interest to the geopolitically inclined, as are all of Laqueur’s many books.Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-14251-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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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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