A story of unbelievable suffering and courage that deserves to be told.
A fresh account of anti-Nazi resistance.
During World War II, Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) became a national hero in the Netherlands for her actions, which saved the lives of hundreds of Jews. Arrested late in the war, she and her family suffered terribly in concentration camps, and several of her relatives died. A devoted Christian whose faith never flagged, she combined charity work with her profession as a watchmaker before the war and continued her good works until her death. Unlike many survivors, she publicly forgave her oppressors, even the worst of the concentration camp guards. After the war, she set up rehabilitation centers that supported survivors but also welcomed countrymen who were unemployable due to their support of the Nazis during the occupation. Ten Boom’s bestselling 1971 memoir, The Hiding Place, was made into a 1975 film, and her many Christian-themed books, as well as biographies by other writers, are still in print. Loftis, bestselling author of nonfiction spy thrillers, wondered if there was anything he could add. Fortunately for readers, he turns up diaries and letters from others in ten Boom’s circle as well as a trove of photographs that enable him to tell a detailed, moving story. Despite the heroism of the Dutch resistance, three-quarters of Holland’s Jews were killed, a higher percentage than in Belgium and France. Reports of genuine heroes like ten Boom are not in short supply, but they are nonetheless inspiring stories about a small minority whose sacrifices, although worthy of acclaim, played a marginal role in the Allied victory or in mitigating the Holocaust. This is a solid addition to the literature about these heroes. The author also includes an informative section at the end titled “The Rest of the Story,” which chronicles “the accomplishments of those not necessarily connected to the ten Booms, but central to the overall Dutch World War II story.”
A story of unbelievable suffering and courage that deserves to be told.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063234581
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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
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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