Regardless of the level of fame of his subjects, Maraniss’s reportage is always sharp and sympathetic.
A wide-ranging mix of stories from the longtime Washington Post journalist, who blends the political and personal, the uplifting and tragic.
Rare is the daily-newspaper reporter who can produce virtuoso long-form work on deadline, but Maraniss (Rome 1960: The Summer Olympics that Stirred the World, 2008, etc.) presents two exemplars of the form. His feature on 9/11 heartbreakingly recalls the events from multiple perspectives, deftly shifting among quotidian detail (such as a Britney Spears photo taped to the computer of a World Trade Center worker), graphic imagery and emotional dialogue. Also outstanding is his story on Seung Hui Cho’s mass murder on the campus of Virginia Tech in 2007, which helped earn the Post a Pulitzer Prize. None of the other pieces quite capture the intense, in-the-moment feel of those stories, but Maraniss drills deep into his subject matter. He’s also an astute judge of the most interesting angle from which to start his investigations. Focusing on the life of Barack Obama’s mother, for instance, reveals plenty about the president’s character. In 1992, Maraniss reported on Bill Clinton by telling the story of the rough-and-tumble Arkansas town where he grew up, presaging the demeanor and shortcomings of his presidency. The bulk of the collection comes from the author’s Post reporting, though excerpts from his books are included as well, including an expertly observed chapter on the famous 1967 “Ice Bowl” between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys, drawn from his biography of Vince Lombardi, When Pride Still Mattered. The book also features three penetrating essays about the last days of his sister, his uncle and his father. In the last of them, “Dad and Ron Santo,” Maraniss merges his love of journalism and sports, focused on the image of his father listening to the former Cubs star call a game on the radio.
Regardless of the level of fame of his subjects, Maraniss’s reportage is always sharp and sympathetic.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-6002-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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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