A well-researched study that will produce further debate about the Reagan era and the Cold War.
An admiring account of Ronald Reagan’s role in winning the Cold War.
Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, admits that Reagan had a few warts, and members of his administration far more, but some readers may believe he gives Reagan more credit than he deserves. Throughout the Cold War, many Americans believed that the Soviet Union was militarily stronger than the U.S. and that clever communists were more successful than democratic parties in influencing foreign governments. In fact, by Reagan’s arrival, its clunky command economy was on life support, its leaders a series of unimaginative old men, and its army bogged down in Afghanistan. Reagan hated communism and détente, the American policy at the time (begun the previous decade by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger), which aimed to ease tensions. Most Republicans approved of Reagan’s confrontational policies, but the Soviet Union showed no signs of change until his second administration. Largely ignoring Reagan’s domestic agenda, Inboden delivers an expert account of the political and diplomatic events of the 1980s. Carrying out his vow to pressure the Soviets, Reagan expanded the military, pressed allies to do the same, and “escalated the CIA covert action flooding the Iron Curtain with contraband media to undermine communism.” He extolled free elections, democracy, and human rights, but critics still point out that dictators who proclaimed their anti-communism often got free passes. Matters changed when Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in 1985, but few knew it at the time. A year passed before Reagan came “to see that Gorbachev was indeed the partner for peace Reagan had long sought.” To his credit, he was far ahead of his advisers, and by the time he left office, the Cold War hostility and fear of nuclear Armageddon had vanished and the Soviet Union was on its way to collapse. Throughout, the author’s portrait is more flattering to Reagan than usual but not unconvincing.
A well-researched study that will produce further debate about the Reagan era and the Cold War.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4589-9
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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