Sage advice in perilous times.
A close observer of world governments sounds an alarm about threats to democracy.
Former Secretary of State Albright (Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948, 2012, etc.) offers an authoritative and well-grounded analysis of the growing rise of fascism around the world. Why, she asks, “has international momentum toward democracy slowed, and why are so many charlatans seeking to undermine public confidence in elections, the courts, the media,” and science? She counts the current president among the charlatans. “Trump’s eyes light up,” she writes, “when strongmen steamroll opposition, brush aside legal constraints, ignore criticism, and do whatever it takes to get their way.” A fascist leader, Albright asserts, uses any means necessary to command obedience and therefore depends on a popular base willing to take orders. Preying upon the “fears and hopes of average people,” fascism begins insidiously, with “a seemingly minor character” who professes to be the single person to solve a nation’s problems. Deteriorating social and economic conditions offer an opportunity for “a gifted pied piper” to rise. As Mussolini observed, those seeking power should “do so in the manner of plucking a chicken—feather by feather” to keep the process as quiet as possible. “Soon enough,” warns Albright, “the government that silences one media outlet finds muffling a second easer.” Besides providing an overview of the careers of Mussolini and Hitler, Albright looks at leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Putin, she observes, is not yet a “full-blown” fascist, but he “has flipped through Stalin’s copy of the totalitarian playbook and underlined passages of interest to call on when convenient.” Albright concludes with 10 questions to ask of any prospective leader: Do they inflame prejudices and incite desire for revenge; encourage contempt for governing institutions, the press, and the judiciary; exploit symbols of patriotism; brag about their power to solve all problems; and exhibit “pumped up machismo about using violence”?
Sage advice in perilous times.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-280218-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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 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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