Unpretentious, well-developed history of WW II from the viewpoints of the European neutrals, by Packard (History/Univ. of Portland; Sons of Heaven, 1987, etc.). Packard writes highly readable, down-to-earth history, and he explicates the practical and ethical problems of neutrality with a convincing concreteness as well, making it clear that realism, flexibility, and diplomatic finesse were required to survive as a neutral living cheek by jowl with great and greedy powers. And courage, too: Switzerland's General Guisan and Sweden's Prime Minister Hannson never blinked when threatened by Germany. Packard presents his neutrals' situations clearly: Switzerland, located at the juncture of Maginot and Siegfried lines, was a convenient area for flanking movements by either side in the war, and its tunnels connected Germany with Italy. Swedish iron-ore was crucial to the German war effort, and ties between Sweden and Germany were close. Though without an army, Ireland, through an incomprehensible Neville Chamberlain decision on the eve of the war, controlled ports crucial to British defense, prompting Churchill to advocate any means to regain them. And Portugal had to balance its traditional alliance with England (which protected Portugal's colonies) against the possibility of German victory and the geographic proximity of a Spain too weakened by civil war to be of use to Germany, but still a threat to Portugal. Packard explores the developments step by intricate step, presenting Sweden's case, complicated by geography, as the most difficult, requiring that nation to repeatedly resist Allied and German pressures for access to its transport. King Gustav's brinkmanship with Hitler over the priceless iron-ore fields is riveting. Within this long but well-told cliffhanger, Packard weaves a message: that neutrals are not mere cowardly inconveniences to the great powers, but are nations with cultures and agendas (and diplomatic know-how) of durable value. (Maps.)
Pub Date: Nov. 14, 1992
ISBN: 0-684-19248-9
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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 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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