A graphic tale of horrific deprivation that is sure to be the benchmark account.
A blow-by-blow account of the Greely Expedition to the northernmost polar regions from 1881 to 1884.
In the lore of Arctic exploration, the Greely Expedition, aka the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, holds a special place. Named after its commanding officer, Lt. Adolphus Greely, the expedition, comprised of 24 scientists and explorers, achieved the distinction of making a documented foray to the farthest north, but it also carried accusations of cannibalism during its last days afield before rescue. In this highly detailed account, Levy (River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon, 2011, etc.) makes full use of all the writings—journals, books, and articles—that the expedition spawned. The adventurers wanted to establish a chain of research stations to collect data on the region, and they also set out to search for survivors of the USS Jeannette expedition, which had disappeared two years prior. Furthermore, they sought to “attain Farthest North, an explorer’s holy grail of the highest northern latitude, which had been held by the British” for three centuries. Levy does a remarkable job of keeping things lively despite the crush of detail (“it carried a load of five thousand pounds of coal (in thirty-nine bags), gear, and men, drawing five feet of water”). When Greely finally decides to make a dash for it, having waited in vain for two years for supply ships to rendezvous with his team, the author comes into his own, grippingly chronicling their harrowing journey. Through the bitter cold and long nights, the men slogged in retreat south, suffering frostbite so bad that one explorer pleaded, “Oh, will you kill me? Please.” They ate the soles of their boots and, later, “nothing but a few swigs of water since eating the last of Greely’s sleeping bag cover.” Levy presents the evidence for cannibalism in a balanced manner, and he does a solid job situating the expedition’s scientific achievements in the history of polar exploration.
A graphic tale of horrific deprivation that is sure to be the benchmark account.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-18219-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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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