A must-read for military buffs and a should-read for anyone who has given even a cursory thought to the U.S. efforts in...
The search for the story behind an IED death leads to the history of the post–9/11 wars and the lives of the men and women who fight them.
Coming to terms with the details surrounding the death of a fallen comrade is often both personal and businesslike. In Castner’s (The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life that Follows, 2012) latest book, it is almost entirely personal. No longer on the job as part of an Air Force explosive ordnance disposal team, the author investigates his friend Matt’s wartime death to answer some of his questions and the demons that lived alongside them. Castner already had intimate knowledge of what Matt was doing every day in Afghanistan as part of the EOD team, and he used that foundation to find the personal stories of others who survived IED blasts, men and women who were crucial in the search for “the Engineer” of the bomb and the way war has changed for the current generation of soldiers. Castner’s personal drive shines through the investigation, providing an intimacy that draws readers in. Not just along for the ride, readers will be equally invested with the author in finding the elusive man behind the IED technology. Castner does a beautiful job of putting together his puzzle, weaving all the seemingly disparate elements into one cohesive whole. Covering all aspects of his experiences, the author makes learning about a week in the life of a drone pilot as integral to the story as understanding how insurgents target specific military vehicles. Castner’s writing is evocative and engaging, completely absorbing from beginning to end.
A must-read for military buffs and a should-read for anyone who has given even a cursory thought to the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62872-654-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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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