A thorough and exacting historical analysis of wartime incarceration.
A scholarly examination of a neglected aspect of World War II: prisoner-of-war camps in the United States.
In 1943, American forces were fighting with the British against German and Italian soldiers in North Africa, and they confronted a logistical problem—there was no means of securely imprisoning captured enemy combatants locally. The United States took charge of 50,000 of them and shipped them stateside—the first of 435,000 German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war who would be interned on American soil. Eventually, nearly 1,000 permanent camps were established across the country, and an elaborate system of incarceration was constructed in accordance with Geneva Convention protocols. Many German soldiers reacted to this in a way that may surprise readers: “They were extremely relieved to be in America even under these conditions rather than the unpleasant alternatives, including dreadful conditions their counterparts were experiencing fighting the Soviets.” Former U.S. Navy officer Gary Slaughter’s meticulous study, edited by Joanne Fletcher Slaughter, examines the various education programs that were available to U.S.–based POWs as well as attempts to “reprogram” ideologically committed Nazis. He also documents the internment camps that falsely imprisoned Japanese Americans as well as ethnic Germans and Italians, and for the sake of comparison, he explores the experiences of Americans incarcerated in camps in Germany, Japan, and Italy. Overall, this is a remarkably detailed exposition; one even learns exactly what an average prisoner in the United States ate for breakfast each morning. Moreover, the author provides a cleareyed discussion of the ensuing national debate regarding the excellent treatment that American forces gave to enemy POWs, and how it stood in stark contrast to deplorable conditions that U.S. soldiers endured abroad. Gary Slaughter’s prose is unerringly clear but also quite plain, even featureless, making the book feel more like an encyclopedia than a broader historical narrative at times. Nonetheless, it’s a well-researched introduction to an element of the war that hasn’t received sufficient scrutiny.
A thorough and exacting historical analysis of wartime incarceration.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73380-213-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Fletcher House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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