by James Sullivan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 8, 2020
An outstanding addition to the still-active genre of WWII histories focusing on a single unit, ship, or bomber.
The captivating story of a World War II destroyer that saw plenty of action.
While conducting research on the Plunkett, which was “all over the place, intersecting with the greatest events and personages of the war,” Sullivan discovered that several crew members were still alive, so he interviewed nonagenarian veterans, as well as their children and grandchildren, in addition to his diligent combing of archives, journals, and ship’s logs. The result is a vivid portrait of the sailors, wives, girlfriends, and families and their world, in which the Plunkett’s battles often seem like interludes. As is typical in war, tedium was the norm, excitement came at rare intervals, and one horrendous incident ensured the ship’s place in history. Launched in 1940, the Plunkett was one of 514 destroyers that fought WWII; 71 were lost, the most of any ship. Even before war broke out, the Plunkett escorted convoys to Britain across the North Atlantic. In November 1942, it accompanied a massive fleet and army that crossed to North Africa during Operation Torch. In July 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily, and the Luftwaffe sank many Allied ships—but not the Plunkett, which also narrowly escaped damage during the invasion of the Italian mainland at Salerno. Matters changed on Jan. 24, 1944 in the sea off Anzio, where a swarm of attackers seemed to target the Plunkett. Countless bombs missed, but one struck, causing terrible damage and killing 53 men. Sullivan delivers a gripping account of what followed as the men fought the fires, rescued survivors, retrieved bodies and body parts, and limped into harbor. After three months of repairs in the U.S., the ship returned to Europe to serve again. Sullivan has done his homework, and readers will enjoy his generous digressions into biography, courtship, shore-leave horseplay, shipboard politics, and a postwar summary.
An outstanding addition to the still-active genre of WWII histories focusing on a single unit, ship, or bomber.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982147-63-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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