An informative treatise that swiftly limns a period of worldwide tension.
An attorney and amateur historian offers a brief history of the many political issues that contributed to the Cold War.
As Jensen explains in his introduction, “The fall of Soviet Communism [in 1991] was as much a surprise to US intelligence as to the general public.” This led him to wonder: “Why did the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies fall so suddenly and surprisingly?” As he pondered his initial query, he says, it led him to more questions, which he explores in these pages. Overall, the book offers a sort of capsule overview of the Cold War. It touches on expected topics, such as the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and CIA covert projects, as well as others that may seem more tangential, including the Civil Rights Movement and the legacy of Mao Zedong. Jensen notes the many common misconceptions Americans have about the Cold War: “Most of us in the US had at best a partial view of the issues, exacerbated by a lack of curiosity and some willful ignorance.” In these pages, he skillfully leads this target audience past these barriers, using his skills as a longtime business litigation attorney who’s accustomed to analyzing facts and historical precedent. His voluminous bibliography draws on solid volumes on various topics by such luminaries as David Halberstam, Joan Didion, and Louis Menand, but his greatest skill is synthesizing the complexities of historical developments to make them more accessible, while mixing in a liberal dose of pop culture. As with any collection, some essays are more effective than others and will depend on individual readers’ preference. “Decade of Reckoning: Two Takes on the US Experience of the 1970s,” for instance, will speak most effectively to a latter-day baby boomer, like the author himself, and “Marx’s Crafty Nemesis: The Evolutions of Capitalism,” as straightforward as it is, will appeal mostly to those with some prior knowledge of economics. Still, Jensen’s slim but analysis-packed book offers plenty of substance, even for those who may be too young to remember the Cold War era.
An informative treatise that swiftly limns a period of worldwide tension.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9798385215089
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Resource Publications
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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