Duffy’s portrait of the South Pacific is an entertaining and well-researched war history that will satisfy intrigued novices...
A history of the battle for the island of New Guinea during World War II.
Duffy (The Sinking of the Laconia and the U-Boat War: Disaster in the Mid-Atlantic, 2013, etc.) sets out to tell the “forgotten” story of Allied Commander in Chief Douglas MacArthur’s battle against the Imperial Japanese Army for the seemingly inconsequential island of New Guinea. It’s a bit misleading to classify this story as forgotten, given the breadth of war scholarship available, and little about Duffy’s account of the events that transpired to beat back Japanese encroachment throughout the South Pacific appears new or revelatory. Nevertheless, the author ably reconstructs the chronology of battles that were pivotal to staving off the Japanese and their ambitious yet foolhardy goal of limitless military expansion. The empire sought the island of New Guinea as an offensive against Australia and ultimately against Allied forces taking strategic positions in the South Pacific. The American-led coalition focused their efforts on the strategic New Guinea city of Port Moresby on the southern side of the island as well as the port of Rabaul, located on the nearby island of New Britain. MacArthur’s strategy of isolating groups of Japanese troops across the island to cut them off from supply chains forced them to either surrender, starve, or die of disease, which was rampant in the tropical jungles of the region. Duffy expertly unwinds the many disparate threads that make up wartime planning and communication, contrasting strategy with outcome and showing how the chain of command truly takes control in an otherwise chaotic situation. For all his careful reconstructing, Duffy is often exhaustively detailed, but his thoroughness pays off. The events of the war are elegantly retold, and while they may not be forgotten, they are certainly overlooked. This book could change that.
Duffy’s portrait of the South Pacific is an entertaining and well-researched war history that will satisfy intrigued novices and devoted students alike.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-41830-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: NAL Caliber/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
