A modest contribution to the history of nuclear weapons, enlivened by anecdotes alternately amusing and frightening.
Dense political history of the high-tech agency devoted to ensuring that all those books and movies depicting evildoers sneaking nuclear bombs into America remain works of fiction.
Before the 1974 creation of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), the United States experienced many frightening nuclear-related incidents, from bombs accidentally dropped by Air Force planes to stolen fission material and fraudulent announcements by individuals claiming to possess a bomb. None produced civilian casualties, but experts deplored the makeshift nature of the responses from government and industry specialists, local police and the FBI. A senior fellow at the National Security Archive, Richelson (Spying on the Bomb, 2006, etc.) admits that NEST has never been “super-secret,” although some of its equipment is classified. The scientists, engineers and technicians who work for the agency travel worldwide to investigate threats, search for nuclear material and assist in its disposal. Since NEST’s creation, world terrorism has mushroomed. The author chronicles terrorists’ energetic attempts to acquire a nuclear device or enough radioactive material to disperse in a low-tech “dirty bomb.” Despite an unnerving number of potential sources, from corrupt former Soviet officials to Pakistani scientists sympathetic to terrorist aims, no plot has come near to success, but Richelson’s stories will keep readers squirming. NEST has not yet short-circuited an actual attack, so readers should not expect dramatic surprises, and the pace flags when the narrative bogs down in interminable political infighting over control of U.S. antiterrorism forces, or descriptions of the agency’s many realistic training missions and efforts to help nations secure their nuclear stockpiles. Readers can skip these sections in favor of the author’s gripping tales of nuclear-related hoaxes, complex extortion plots, reactor mishaps and genuine efforts by terrorists who usually ended up buying useless material from conmen or miscellaneous but unhelpful bomb parts.
A modest contribution to the history of nuclear weapons, enlivened by anecdotes alternately amusing and frightening.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06515-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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 Yorkerstaff 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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