An intriguing presentation of views seldom reported so readably and in such depth, offering a fresh new perspective to...
Authoritative historical overview of the European Union by a policy adviser and speechwriter for the current president of the European Council.
Originally published overseas in 2012, this volume won several awards, including the European Book Prize, for its unique approach and relevance for understanding current developments. Dutch political philosopher van Middelaar offers an erudite alternative to the persistent drumbeat about the coming, market-driven disintegration of the European Union. He provides a clear account of the origin of the EU, the political and philosophical issues and conflicts that shaped its evolution, and the turning points in its development. The author develops his views while assessing all three elements in the EU's political and institutional infrastructure: the inner core of the European Commission in Brussels; the intermediary circle of the European Council, comprised of the heads of state of EU member nations; and the outer circle made up of the nations themselves. The outer circle's geographic boundaries to the east and southeast remain undetermined; nations such as Ukraine and Turkey are still hoping to qualify. In discussing the birth of the EU, van Middelaar draws comparisons with the creation of the United States. He places its evolution and key turning points in the international context of relations with the U.S. and the impact of the Cold War. He provides an added dimension relevant to current events with his discussion of the effect on Europe's political institutions of President Richard Nixon's 1971 decision to take the dollar off the gold standard and the subsequent Middle East War, as well as the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union after 1989.
An intriguing presentation of views seldom reported so readably and in such depth, offering a fresh new perspective to American readers.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-300-18112-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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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