An important study for understanding the roots of current tensions.
A scholarly exploration of the long-running rivalry between the two Arab oil juggernauts and their proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Eminent historian and prolific author Hiro (The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan, 2015, etc.), who has written many books on Middle Eastern issues, focuses on a pertinent crucible of roiling tension in the region that is causing an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Yemen, one of the Arab world’s poorest countries. The historic rivalry between Iran, the Shia stronghold backing rebels loyal to Yemen’s Houthis rebels, and Saudi Arabia, bolstering Yemen’s weakened Sunni government, resulted in Saudi-led bombing of civilian targets and widespread famine. The newly open animus between Tehran and Riyadh, encompassing raw issues such as the Syrian Civil War, Iran’s nuclear program, and the penalizing of Qatar (and Turkey) for its close ties with Iran, came largely at the behest of the newly ascended Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. The young, impulsive, and evidently ruthless crown prince is now vilified globally (except by Donald Trump) for his alleged role in organizing and sanctioning the egregious murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. (Unfortunately, this game-changing event does not appear in this version of the book, though the author has written about it in other publications; hopefully, the paperback will include further information regarding Khashoggi.) Still, Hiro clearly explains the historic rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, much of which stems from each country’s respective “claims to exceptionalism”: Iran and its ancient Persian culture and language, and Saudi Arabia’s apotheosis in the 18th century with the Al Saud dynasty, stewardship of “the two most sacred sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina,” and possessor of the world’s second largest “underground sea of petroleum” (after Venezuela).
An important study for understanding the roots of current tensions.Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-19-094465-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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 Yorkerstaff 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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