by Richard Overy ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2018
This is a story Overy has told in earlier, much longer histories, but this is a fine introduction.
A skillful pocket history of the founding of the Royal Air Force in 1918 and its fate after the armistice.
This is well-traveled ground for veteran military historian Overy (History/Univ. of Exeter; WWII Remembered: From Blitzkrieg Through to the Allied Victory, 2015, etc.), who emphasizes that in 1917, after three years of war, Britain’s army employed a large air force and its navy a modest one, and no airman yearned for an independent service. That was a decision made by politicians in London and provoked by German bombing raids. Although trivial by World War II standards, the 1,400 Britons killed provoked panic and desire for revenge as well as a more effective air force. “The politicians wanted a force to defend the home front against the novel menace of bombing,” writes the author, “amidst fears that the staying power of the population might be strained to the breaking point by the raids.” Naval and army commanders opposed the decision, and one of the detractors was Hugh Trenchard, the commander of the Royal Flying Corps who felt that a major reorganization would distract from support of ground forces in France. After consolidation became inevitable, Trenchard reluctantly agreed to become Chief of Air Staff but quarreled so badly with his civilian superior that he resigned after three months. Despite fierce, almost comic-opera disputes over uniforms, ensigns, and titles, ably recounted by Overy, the RAF was up and running by summer 1918. It performed well supporting ground forces against the final German offensive, but this change also encouraged the fantasy, still going strong, that air power alone—strategic bombing then, drones now—will win wars. Shared by civilian leaders, it kept the RAF alive during disastrous cutbacks after 1918 but meant that it got off on the wrong foot in WWII.
This is a story Overy has told in earlier, much longer histories, but this is a fine introduction.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-65229-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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edited by Richard Overy
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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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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