by Dean Rotbart ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 11, 2021
A thrilling and inspiring tale of journalistic dedication.
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In this nonfiction book, a journalist examines the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Wall Street Journal and the newspaper’s efforts to publish the following day.
When the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11, the offices of the Journal, located just across the street, were torn asunder as well, absorbing a “near-fatal blow.” The fog of chaos was formidable—while many staffers hadn’t arrived for work yet, others needed to be evacuated. Paul Steiger, the paper’s “journalistic North Star,” was incommunicado for so many hours that many presumed he was dead. Besides the fight for survival, the paper’s staff responded valiantly to the “palpable” pressure to make its routine deadlines and print an edition the next day, keeping its understandably anxious readers informed. Rotbart, a former Journal reporter and columnist, pieces together a collection of narrative vignettes that tell the story of that day’s grim struggle, filled with fear, sadness, and extraordinary courage. The affecting account includes a wide range of perspectives, from the paper’s well-known luminaries like Steiger, Bob Bartley, and Paul Gigot to the “small battalion of unheralded journalists.” Amazingly, the paper was successfully printed, a feat that required a large organization with considerable internal fissures to achieve a unity of purpose: “On September 11 and early September 12, all of those quarrels were set aside for a fleeting moment. America had come under attack, and, as never before, the extended network of Wall Street Journal employees and contractors, union and non-union alike, were of one mind.” The author paints a moving tableau of journalists torn between their familial obligations and their professional ones as well as shaken by fear. Some acted heroically—John C. Bussey, a foreign editor, defied orders to evacuate the stricken building because he was so dedicated to doing his job. This is a remarkable testament to the valor of the paper’s staff and a poignant picture of journalism at its heights.
A thrilling and inspiring tale of journalistic dedication.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73448-417-5
Page Count: 311
Publisher: TJFR Publishing Co
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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