A deft, richly illuminating perspective on the Vietnam War.
An incisive history of the Vietnam War via the groundbreaking accomplishments of three remarkable women journalists.
In her latest, Becker, who has covered war and foreign policy for the Washington Post, NPR, and the New York Times, focuses on the careers of Frances FitzGerald, Kate Webb, and Catherine Leroy, interweaving their stories as they traveled to Vietnam in the mid-1960s. As U.S. involvement was escalating and news organizations continued to send men to chronicle the war, these women paid their own ways and sought out freelance reporting opportunities. French photojournalist Leroy was already a licensed parachutist when she arrived in Saigon in 1966. A year later, she became the first journalist to join in a combat parachute jump, and she gained widespread recognition for her up-close images of soldiers in battle, many published in Life. Webb was an Australian freelance correspondent who eventually became the United Press International bureau chief in Phnom Penh. After being captured by North Vietnamese troops operating in Cambodia in 1971, Webb made international headlines when premature reports of her death led to a New York Times obituary—before she emerged from captivity several days later. FitzGerald’s arrival coincided with the Buddhist uprising in South Vietnam in 1966. Realizing the events could serve as “a window into an unsettling truth about Vietnam,” she sought to understand and write about the Vietnamese on their own terms. Her debut book, Fire in the Lake (1972), won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. “Leroy, FitzGerald, and Webb were the three pioneers who changed how the story of war was told,” writes Becker. “They were outsiders—excluded by nature from the confines of male journalism, with all its presumptions and easy jingoism—who saw war differently and wrote about it in wholly new ways.” The author was also present as a journalist in the final years when the war shifted to Cambodia, which adds depth and a riveting personal dimension to the book.
A deft, richly illuminating perspective on the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5417-6820-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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