A controversial reception is a safe prediction for this already heralded first novel — that and a wide market along the lines of The Naked and The Dead. The two books offer many analogies: -fearless realism in depicting men in the armed forces, their thoughts, their conversation, their emotions, their brute natures; occasional tenderness in reflecting the softer sides of their natures- appreciation of beauty-yearnings; the reflection of the comradeship of the army, along with its jealousies, internal politics, unity in hating authority. This book differs sharply from the Mailer book in the construction, the interweaving of plots, the brief glimpses of the glamor of the Hawaiian background, make for easier, less jarring reading. There's some powerful writing here -and some that is overdone, lush; it would benefit by some drastic cutting. The raw crudity and obsession with sex will offend many; its excuse the same as that made for The Naked and the Dead — this is how men are, without civilizing externals. The period offers less excuse, however. Here are men worn down by boredom and tensions of army discipline in the hands of bullies, in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. One feels, however, that the author's intent is to convey to the reader the central character, Prew's, love for the army; instead what emerges is his turbulent resistance, his recurrent rebellion. Even in death, when the impact of war makes him face the punishment involved in being AWOL, and he dies at the hands of a trigger-happy MP, his overwhelming impulse to seek the Army again is not wholly convincing. Some of the minor characters are vigorously drawn; there are unforgettable episodes, glimpses of behind the scenes in the barracks, the horrors of medieval methods of punishment, the savage reprisals, and a succession of close-ups of brothels and even one memorable scene in a de luxe establishment for homosexuals. All in all, an unpalatable, distasteful picture of army life....Publisher backing ($10,000 initial advertising); the impact of the book on the first readers; the certain storm of controversy, all make certain a terrific send-off for an impressive first novel.
Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1951
ISBN: 0385333641
Page Count: 862
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1951
APPRECIATIONS
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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