An engaging look at controversial defendants from the 1940s to the ’70s.
A meticulous legal examination of the evidence against famous espionage and terrorism defendants.
The majority of Roberts’ debut study focuses on post–World War II America: the era of Cold War paranoia, real and perceived Soviet threats, McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Using a large dose of common sense, the author analyzes testimony from espionage cases involving U.S. government employees Alger Hiss, David Zablodowsky, Oliver Edmund Clubb, Harry Dexter White, William Remington and Judith Coplon. The most compelling passages zero in on Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, two colorful characters who confessed to acts of treason and then testified against their alleged accomplices in order to avoid prosecution. Roberts suggests that the FBI and other authorities had invested so much in these unreliable witnesses that they went to great lengths to prop up their veneers of respectability—despite the witnesses’ odd behavior and questionable claims. Toward the end of the book, the author abruptly shifts to the Irish Republican Army bombings in Britain during the 1970s and the suspects referred to as the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six. Here, he continues to attack official versions of events by underscoring their flawed assumptions and logistical improbabilities. However, he doesn’t explain his rationale for including such disparate historical contexts until the final chapter: “Both countries, and both periods, are linked by the fact that in each there was an urgent need to find someone who was guilty; and that in both, stories of the most preposterous kind were believed.” Thus, readers might want to begin with the last chapter to contextualize the interwoven tales of intrigue recounted in the rest of the book. Fortunately, the author provides a helpful index of the myriad figures, organizations and themes that resurface throughout the text. As debates about the guilt or innocence of these individuals rage on, this book will certainly stoke that fire.
An engaging look at controversial defendants from the 1940s to the ’70s.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1456789862
Page Count: 300
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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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