These are familiar events, but Allport’s interpretation is superb.
The first of two volumes in which British historian Allport delivers his opinionated analysis that carries a modest whiff of revisionism.
Though Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sometimes gave the impression that he was “a weak and timid politician,” Allport emphasizes that he was a combative, dynamic prime minister who considered himself “an acute judge of character and a sharp negotiator.” The author condemns him for betraying Czechoslovakia to Hitler at the October Munich talks, but he adds that Britons dreaded repeating the slaughter of World War I. “Chamberlain’s error was not to hate war,” writes Allport, “but to assume that everyone hated it as much as he did.” In fact, Hitler yearned to invade Czechoslovakia and eventually considered the Munich agreement a defeat. The author, a fluid, incisive historian, reminds readers that Chamberlain returned from Munich to almost unanimous acclaim. Despite his early denunciation of Hitler, Churchill, in 1938 “was seen by the nation as a reactionary Tory turncoat...who was widely unpopular and roundly distrusted.” He was definitely not prescient in sharing (along with Chamberlain) the fantasy that mass bombing would determine a future war, so both starved the army to support the air force. The British look back on the “phony war” from September 1939 to June 1940 as a mistake—not of their own making—that concluded with the heroism of Dunkirk and then their “Finest Hour” while the French collapsed. Allport’s provocative view will intrigue American readers, if not his countrymen, as he maintains that France’s army was not demoralized, poorly equipped, or led by incompetents. French historians point out (to this day) that Britain intended for its ally to bear the brunt of the fighting and then held back its air force when the issue was in doubt, made the decision to evacuate without consulting them, and insisted that British troops take priority at Dunkirk. There followed a year of mostly defeats until Hitler’s June 1941 invasion of Russia relieved the pressure.
These are familiar events, but Allport’s interpretation is superb.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-451-49474-0
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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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