Worthwhile, though Keegan’s dry account pales next to more immediate works, such as Rick Atkinson’s superb In the Company of...
Saddam had it coming, writes distinguished historian Keegan (Winston Churchill, 2002, etc.) in this account of what he calls the “Iraq War of 2003.”
That war is still unfolding and ongoing in 2004, even though George W. Bush declared the major fighting to be over in May 2003. If Keegan’s account of the campaign is to be faulted, it is because it effectively ends at Bush’s pronouncement—and because Keegan seemingly shares Bush’s belief that Saddam had to go, even though acting on it yielded a war that Keegan characterizes as “mysterious.” For Keegan, the reasons to overthrow Saddam have global implications: “The reality of the Iraq campaign,” he writes, “is . . . a better guide to what needs to be done to secure the safety of our world than any amount of law-making or treaty-writing can offer.” (Kim Il Jong, watch out.) Keegan lingers on the generations between the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Saddam’s rise to power, and on the larger picture of regional geopolitics. As he comes nearer to the actual fighting, Keegan—who is defense editor for the London Daily Telegraph—relies on insights from theater commander Gen. Tommy Franks, who reveals that he “had never cared for the use of the term ‘shock and awe’ ” and didn’t find much to worry about in Iraq’s command-and-control structure, which crumbled the minute Allied bombs began to fall. Keegan provides insights of his own on the important role of international forces, such as the British troops in Basra, Australian special forces in the western desert, and Eastern European contingents whose leaders recognized Saddam for the Stalin wannabe that he was. He is also open in faulting what he perceives to be American missteps; the US command, for instance, ignored the pragmatic approach of the British army in the south and instead disarmed and dismantled the Iraqi army and police, idling masses of well-trained fighters who are now causing the occupiers so much grief.
Worthwhile, though Keegan’s dry account pales next to more immediate works, such as Rick Atkinson’s superb In the Company of Soldiers (p. 115).Pub Date: May 28, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4199-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
