A book every serious World War II student will want.
An in-depth study of the clash of the Japanese and Allied navies in Leyte Gulf, possibly the greatest naval battle of the 20th century.
Veteran military historian Prados (The U.S. Special Forces: What Everyone Needs to Know, 2015, etc.) has researched both U.S. and Japanese intelligence reports from the era, giving unusual insight into the decision-making on both sides. The Philippine invasion was a key step in the Allied strategy of securing bases for what was expected to be an invasion of the Japanese homeland. It was also one of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s cherished goals, recapturing territory he had lost to the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile, the Japanese, reeling from a series of defeats by U.S. forces, decided to throw everything into a decisive naval battle, hoping to lay the ground for a negotiated peace. Prados goes into great detail on the buildup and planning on both sides, with particularly close looks at the intelligence reports available to the planners. The Japanese plans were practically “an open book to the U.S.” On the other hand, the Japanese knew enough to avoid being caught off guard, though they were hampered by having to protect several likely targets. Prados points to mistakes on both sides, notably U.S. Adm. William Halsey’s taking the bait of a Japanese decoy maneuver that lured his carriers away from the main battle. In the end, while both navies took substantial damage, the Japanese navy was all but obliterated. Some readers may find the author’s buildup to the battle itself a bit long; it’s nearly halfway through the book before the first ship-to-ship combat, submarine attacks that sank two Japanese cruisers on the way to Leyte. Other readers may wish for a list of key personnel, especially on the Japanese side, early in the book. While casual readers may be put off, this is still a valuable resource, with a wealth of detail on all aspects of the battle.
A book every serious World War II student will want.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-47361-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: NAL Caliber/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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
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