A rah-rah effort that will appeal to fans of military histories and those who have close contact with the courageous...
An upbeat book about contemporary military veterans, the men and women of America who are “brave enough to assume the ultimate risk so that others could live.”
Starbucks chairman and CEO Schultz (Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul, 2011, etc.) and Washington Post senior correspondent and associate editor Chandrasekaran (Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, 2012, etc.) provide case studies of combat heroism and of individuals returning from recent foreign invasions who have contributed to the building of a better society in the United States. The book's release is tied to Schultz's initiative to hire more military veterans at Starbucks and to generally raise awareness of how surviving veterans can serve their nation in classrooms, medical facilities and other institutions. In a relentlessly optimistic narrative, which is certainly inspiring at points, Schultz and Chandrasekaran avoid almost all mention of female soldiers who are sexually assaulted, of returning veterans who murder innocent civilians, and other commonly told dark case studies. Schultz demonstrates the enthusiasm of a converted zealot—he never served in the military, had no close friends or family who had served recently, and had never spent significant time with soldiers or their family members. That changed after he visited Lewis-McChord and other military bases and sought the counsel of high-profile warriors, including former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “one of our country’s most distinguished public servants.” The many case studies and interviews will certainly move readers who have served in the military, as well as other highly patriotic Americans. Though fervent anti-war readers will find much of the narrative overly positive and even naïve, the case studies are mostly well-reported and often feature individuals who have been unsung until now.
A rah-rah effort that will appeal to fans of military histories and those who have close contact with the courageous soldiers who put their lives on the line.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1101874455
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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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