An excellent addition to the library of any World War II buff.
A chilling reassessment of the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941.
Dimbleby’s premise, similar to that of other historians, is that Hitler’s attempted conquest of Russia, like Napoleon’s march on Moscow more than a century earlier, was a supreme act of hubris and miscalculation. The author begins in April 1922, with a delineation of the Rapallo Treaty, which encouraged the Germans and Soviets, who were both excoriated after World War I, to create a mutual aid pact that allowed Germany to skirt the punitive strictures of the Treaty of Versailles and build up its armaments. This was the precursor to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, which shocked the world but again displayed the deep suspicions of the British held by the Soviet Union and Germany. Indeed, as Prime Minister Lloyd George lamented, Rapallo represented “the deepest slime of pre-war treachery and intrigue,” since Hitler had no intention of keeping his word to the Bolsheviks he despised. Dimbleby writes in excruciating detail of the Germans’ march toward Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow, resulting in hideous carnage on both sides, as well as the Nazis’ cynical design of a “Hunger Plan” for the invaded country—i.e., deliberate starvation. Though the Nazis, who considered the Slavic people to be “subhuman,” expected a swift victory, they were continually surprised by the fierce resistance. Weeks of standoff with his generals weakened Hitler’s resolve to take Moscow first, diverting badly needed resources into Crimea and toward Leningrad. Over the course of this masterly chronicle, Dimbleby shows that while the imbalance of man and materiel worked in the Soviet Union’s favor, “the collapse of Barbarossa owed more, far more, to a catalogue of self-delusions, false assumptions, and miscalculations that flowed directly from the arrogance of the German High Command and the folly of its supreme commander, the Führer.” Though he acknowledges the work of Ian Kershaw and other notable historians, he delivers his own fresh perspective.
An excellent addition to the library of any World War II buff.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-754721-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
HISTORY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD
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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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