An awesome catalog of crime, corruption, depravity and visionary chutzpah.
The dark, dark story of the sunny American Riviera.
Investigative reporter Posner (Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, 2005, etc.) marshals more than 200 personal interviews and oceans of research to trace the troubled history of Miami Beach, the seductive city with stunning beauty and beset by vice. In 1913, Carl Fisher—a voluble daredevil, promotional genius and virulent racist and anti-Semite—saw in the swampland of Miami a potential tourist’s paradise. He set about developing the area with a combination of recklessness, greed and hubris that would characterize subsequent generations of speculators. Major obstacles to this dream of an upscale tropical playland included an entrenched community of poor elderly retirees and vicious gangs of criminals emanating from the infamous Mariel Boatlift of 1980, during which Fidel Castro opened Cuba’s prisons and insane asylums, sending tens of thousands Cuban miscreants into the region with predictably catastrophic results. Posner deftly cuts between accounts of horror and deprivation endemic to the area with such sparkling monuments to luxury as the Fontainebleau Hotel, beloved local institutions like Joe’s Stone Crab, glittering nightclub pleasure palaces like the Forge and Nu and the beautiful Art Deco architecture that gives the Miami Beach its iconic skyline. The author covers the devastation of Hurricane Andrew and the recent economic crash, illustrating Miami Beach’s paradoxical nature as both paradise and purgatory. The narrative is dense with information, and the many players and their complicated wheeling and dealing can difficult to follow. However, the story is fast-moving and colorful and features such scene notables as mob bosses Meyer Lansky and Al Capone, actors Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rourke, ’80s party girl and nightclub promoter Ingrid Casares and charismatic, corrupt mayor Alex Daoud. Tales abound of the exploits of the “cocaine cowboys” and their astonishing mountains of dirty cash, the impact of entertainments such as Miami Vice and Scarface and Miami’s emergence as a fashion capitol, culminating in the sensational murder of designer Gianni Versace.
An awesome catalog of crime, corruption, depravity and visionary chutzpah.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7656-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2009
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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