Chasteen occasionally adopts too casual a tone, and there are portions of his narrative that could use more to reinforce...
A broad overview of one of the world’s most historically volatile regions.
Plenty has been written already about the near and distant past of Latin America, but Chasteen (History/Univ. of North Carolina) provides an account that is strikingly thorough, as well as readable and brief. He follows a strict chronology, beginning with indigenous civilizations and continuing to the present day, and he covers not only the highly developed Aztec, Maya, and Inca empires and the larger nations of Mexico and Brazil, but also the many minor pre-colonial cultures and smaller nations (such as Cuba, Peru, Guatemala, and others) in the post-colonial era. Especially notable is Chasteen’s treatment of religious and anti-religious sentiments, liberal and conservative ideologies, and the transcultural “melting pot” of immigration. His approach is wide-ranging and carefully addresses economics, politics, religion, gender, race, and popular culture in order to fully present the complexities of Latin America’s long and turbulent march toward “progress.” His writing is down-to-earth and fast-paced: easy-to-understand statistical snapshots, relevant biographical information about prominent figures (e.g., Carmen Miranda, Juan and Eva Perón, Che Guevara, Pablo Neruda, and others) and colorful stories (the rubber barons who built an opera hall deep in the Amazonian forest) make this a quick and engaging read.
Chasteen occasionally adopts too casual a tone, and there are portions of his narrative that could use more to reinforce credibility and help point the way for further research, but these are minor quibbles in light of his achievement overall.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-05048-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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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