A skillful historian demonstrates how courage and hope characterized the last act of the great campaign to bring peace to...
A detailed account of the final 10 days of World War II in Europe depicts, in full color, the collapse of the Nazi war machine and, with it, the genesis of the Cold War.
Noted British military historian Jones (Total War: From Stalingrad to Berlin, 2011, etc.) presents a microcosm of the fight against Germany, beginning with Hitler’s suicide and ending with the two official victory celebrations—May 8, 1945, for the Western Allies, the next day for the Russians. The Russians, who bore the brunt of the war in Europe, loom large in the author’s story, as they must. Privileged to enter Berlin first, the Red Army impelled the defeated German troops to scatter westward, seeking capture by the Americans. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, whom Jones lauds for his fair dealing, was hard-pressed to maintain the Grand Alliance. In the 10 days that thrilled the world, sporadic fighting was suppressed, cease-fires implemented, and communities liberated. An anti-Bolshevik Russian unit had fought for the Germans and then switched sides. The book’s most moving passages describe the liberation of Mauthausen, Auschwitz, and other concentration camps. The author provides numerous historical flashbacks and copious extracts from contemporaneous records, diaries, and memoirs by writers ranging from Churchill, Stalin, and Eisenhower to little-known combatants, displaced persons, and arrogant functionaries. They serve to heighten the effect of the story the author brings to life with secure, professional expertise. Unlike connoisseurs of military history, casual readers may not be concerned with martial unit designations and some of the gritty details of battle formation, but the exploits of the men and women they represented are engrossing, sometimes even heartbreaking.
A skillful historian demonstrates how courage and hope characterized the last act of the great campaign to bring peace to Europe 70 years ago.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-47701-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: NAL Caliber/Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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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