A work of fine research, peer review and precise, evenhanded writing that is standing the test of time.
The third edition of this solid, comprehensive military history of the United States, first published in 1984, reworks the era from the Korean War onward and includes the requisite additions wrought by the “global war on terrorism.”
In this clearly structured, concisely written work, Millett (History/Univ. of New Orleans; The War for Korea, 1950-1951, 2010), Maslowski (History/Univ. of Nebraska; Armed with Cameras: The American Military Photographers of World War II, 1993, etc.) and Feis (History/Buena Vista Univ.; Grant's Secret Service, 2002, etc.) proceed chronologically, as the nation’s commitment to civilian control of military policy became more nationalized and competitive with internal growth. The authors move across a wide terrain, including coverage of the colonial militiamen, the forging of the “common defense” by the two branches of the government, legislative and executive, as specified under the Constitution, the country’s national expansion through the Civil War, birth of the American “empire” through the two world wars, and Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Maslowski has masterly reorganized coverage of the Korean War, which allowed the Truman administration to substitute victory for rearmament in a major way. The war also provided the “political context” for development of NATO and a more active military role in Asia. The authors are stern with President Reagan’s wild-spending “Star Wars” initiative and the “waste, fraud, and abuse in the procurement process”; with Clinton’s “avoiding war and inviting future conflicts”; and with George W. Bush’s inexperience and alarming staff of hawkish neoconservatives. The authors discuss technological innovations, policy and operations in depth, and they urge the Obama administration to manage a policy less dependent on the whims of “domestic politics” and more reliant on “expert advice from their civilian and military professionals.”
A work of fine research, peer review and precise, evenhanded writing that is standing the test of time.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2353-6
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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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