Satisfying World War II history.
The latest addition to the abundant literature about the pivotal World War II naval battle.
Historians Simms and McGregor write that America’s vast industrial superiority guaranteed victory, but this was not apparent in the months after Pearl Harbor, when Japan’s forces annihilated nearly all opposition from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean. Delighted by this success but anxious to end the war, Japanese leaders decided to attack the U.S. base at Midway. While nearly all histories of the battle pay close attention to the actual fighting, the authors work hard to deliver new information. The first chapter is a biography of Ed Heinemann, designer of the Douglas Dauntless, the dive bomber responsible for the victory. The second concerns Adm. Chester Nimitz, who commanded the Navy in the Pacific and made the correct decisions. In the third chapter, Simms and McGregor explore the life of Norman Jack “Dusty” Kleiss, a pilot whose intense training prepared him for the day that would define his life. It’s no secret that the American fleet approached Midway with inferior numbers but better information thanks to the codebreakers who had learned Japanese plans. This became irrelevant once American reconnaissance detected the Japanese fleet and the U.S. carriers dispatched their strike force. Many squadrons never found the enemy, but several succeeded; within minutes, they sank three carriers and, later, a fourth. The authors emphasize the peerless contribution of the diver bombers. “In the after-action reports written by the task force commanders,” they write, “there was clarity that the battle had been decided neither by the high-level bombers nor by the torpedo bombers, but instead by the dive bombers”—especially the Douglas Dauntless, a superbly designed and sturdy but hardly cutting-edge weapon. Adding that it was paid for and built during peacetime, the authors conclude with a look at China, which now possesses the world’s largest navy, and they urge American leaders to pay attention to the underfunded, overstretched U.S. Navy.
Satisfying World War II history.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5417-0137-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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 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
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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