A compelling mix of biography, cultural history, and political intrigue.
A journalist experienced in reporting from Asia penetrates the secrecy of North Korea about as well as humanly possible.
Fifield, the current Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post and former Tokyo chief for that publication, focuses on Kim Jong Un, the third consecutive leader from the same family to subjugate the citizenry since the partition of Korea after World War II. The author has no direct access to Kim Jong Un (very few do), who was only 27 when he succeeded his father as supreme leader. Because of the outlandish and relentless North Korean government propaganda about the divine origins of the family’s three generations, treating the leaders seriously can seem like an exercise in dishonesty. In addition, the cartoonish physical appearance of Kim Jong Un often gives rise to cruel satire. Refreshingly, Fifield avoids the temptation to treat him less than seriously. Despite his presiding over a police state, the malnutrition of most North Koreans, the bluster, and the “decrepit kleptocracy that was his inheritance,” Fifield understands that the young despot has improved conditions for the citizenry. Partly due to the spotlight that President Donald Trump has shined on him, the North Korean dictator has received sustained attention on the global stage, a phenomenon that the author documents beyond the superficial daily headlines. Most of Fifield’s sources have justified reasons to despise the North Korean family dynasty, but her strong journalism skills allow her to separate the wheat from the chaff of biased sources. At times, she brings herself into the narrative, but she does so judiciously. There is some comic relief with the entrance of such odd characters as former professional basketball player Dennis Rodman, who “loved the adulation he received” when he visited North Korea. Fifield is also good at explaining the personal obsessions that define Kim Jong Un’s dual-level dictatorship, with the top level reserved for the North Korean supporters upon whom he has bestowed lavish wealth.
A compelling mix of biography, cultural history, and political intrigue.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5417-4248-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2019
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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