Being right is important. Being able to document that rightness (or righteousness) is vital. This book lives up to the...
The story of corruption surrounding the awarding of the 2022 World Cup, “worth billions of dollars and priceless prestige to the victor.”
By this point, there are few who doubt that the international governing body of soccer, FIFA, is utterly, uncontrollably, uncontrovertibly, and undoubtedly corrupt. It is an organization without scruples, larger than the United Nations in membership and beholden to a small number of willful men. The granting of the 2022 World Cup to the tiny desert nation of Qatar was an act of both folly and hubris. Readers would be hard-pressed to find anyone who pays attention to global soccer to believe that awarding the country the world’s most popular sport’s premier event was anything but a triumph of graft over merit. It is this story that Buzzfeed U.K. investigations editor Blake and Sunday Times Insight team editor Calvert investigate, and a good portion of the narrative is compelling. However, their reportage hangs on such a thin and fragile reed of evidence that even if it rings true, it does not carry the fundamental burden of proving the truth. Relying on the testimony of shady anonymous interlocutors, drawing on broad but unverifiable inferences, providing no footnotes or endnotes or even a bibliography, the authors tell the world what it wants to hear without proving why it is worth hearing. FIFA is an easy target, and the authors take plenty of justifiable shots at the organization. But it will be up to future writers and scholars not just to take aim at the giant bull’s-eye, but to hit it with greater accuracy. Thinking one knows the truth is not enough, no matter how many anonymous sources tell you otherwise.
Being right is important. Being able to document that rightness (or righteousness) is vital. This book lives up to the former but disappoints on the latter.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3149-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2015
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
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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