A lucid compilation of 39 essays by Said (Comparative Literature/Columbia), the most eloquent spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the Western world since the Arab defeat in the 1967 war against Israel. Said (Culture and Imperialism, 1993, etc.) adds an introduction and final chapter to these essays, which have appeared over the past 25 years in publications ranging from the Village Voice and the London Review of Books to the Journal of Palestine Studies. The essays are critical not only of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, but also of the Arab world's indifference to the Palestinians' plight. American intervention — and sometimes the lack of same — is also criticized. Contending that the Palestinians are a people with their own history, culture, and right to self-determination, Said portrays them as victims of an Israeli occupation, "a cruel thing, a further injustice done to a people deprived of all rights." He depicts Israel as a nation of Holocaust survivors "with a tragic history of genocide and persecution" who are largely insensitive to the rights of the people they displaced. When Said compares the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he lapses from impassioned criticism into outright propaganda. He is equally harsh on the Arab world's repressive and destructive tyrants and decries Arab states for not supporting the intifada, which he sees as a genuine manifestation of Palestinian self-determination. Islamic fundamentalism is glibly dismissed by the secular (and Christian) Said, who envisions a democratic Palestinian state. That "neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have a military option against each other and that both people must learn to live in peace" is Said's major thesis. Disappointed by Arafat and Rabin's recent Oslo agreement, which he claims ignores the vast Palestinian diaspora, Said sees no resolution in sight. A highly charged and eminently readable critique of a sandstorm in the world's eye.
Pub Date: June 30, 1994
ISBN: 0679761454
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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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