A well-researched, mostly engrossing geopolitical narrative of American ingenuity in the face of Russian threats.
Meticulous account of an audacious covert operation to snatch a sunken Russian submarine.
Outside magazine correspondent Dean (Show Dog: The Charmed Life and Trying Times of a Near-Perfect Purebred, 2012, etc.) ably resurrects the forgotten Cold War drama of Project Azorian, showcasing governmental and engineering derring-do, seemingly impossible in both its difficulty and secrecy. Following the K-129’s disappearance in the Pacific in 1968, some American officials realized, “if the US Navy could locate the sub’s precise location, it might be able to access the wreck and mine it for a host of valuable intelligence.” This fell to the CIA, which recruited civilian experts in multiple fields to design a ship equipped with a deep-mining derrick and clawlike “capture vehicle” to pluck the sub off the seafloor. They also developed a plausible cover story, involving new ocean-mining technologies pursued by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Dean captures the personalities and patriotism of the industrialists, engineers, and spies who stealthily built the Hughes Glomar Explorer and perfected large-scale systems so cutting edge that it remained unclear “whether or not they could locate, grab, and lift a submarine three miles deep in the ocean.” The high-risk voyage went forward in 1974 and was partially successful, as a large portion of the submarine broke off while being raised; one engineer “was stunned at how little of the sub remained.” Plans for a follow-up mission were scuttled when the story leaked in the press following a mysterious burglary at a Hughes facility. This created a delicate situation for the new Gerald Ford presidency; to avoid impacting the politics of détente, writes the author, “both sides would pretend as if the boldest and most outlandish intelligence operation in history had never happened.” Dean is verbose in laying out this improbable tale, with a fondness for occasionally extraneous detail, but this style is well-suited to a complex adventure spanning six years and numerous principal characters.
A well-researched, mostly engrossing geopolitical narrative of American ingenuity in the face of Russian threats.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-98443-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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
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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