Though of specialized interest, an eye-opening look into a corner of postwar history that seems more medieval than modern.
Of witch trials, quack medicine, and millenarian terrors in the ashes of the Third Reich.
Given the fiery end of Hitler’s regime and the firebombing of Dresden and other cities, it’s understandable that ordinary Germans might have been apocalypse-minded in 1945. That was still true in 1949, writes history professor Black in this sometimes circuitous but well-paced account, four years after the Allied occupation and the division of the country into East and West Germany. In the wave of denazification that immediately followed surrender, old grudges surfaced in accusations of witchcraft and conspiracy theories. At the time, writes the author, German newspapers and kaffeeklatsches alike were also rife with rumors of the end of the world—not so far-fetched given the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War—and with revisitations of the old Norse stories of Ragnarok. Against this backdrop came one of Black’s principal subjects, a Danziger who changed his name from a Polish antecedent to the German Gröning—and who signed up for the Nazi Party years before the annexation, suggesting that he was looking forward to a comfortable life under Hitler. Instead, he grifted his way across the postwar landscape, engaging in a form of faith healing that yielded a string of faux miracles—but also a negligent homicide or two. (One of Gröning's tools, not surprisingly, was tin foil.) The German courts eventually restrained “Gröning the Wunderdoktor” from practicing medicine without a license along about the time he died and he and his victims were forgotten. Other memorable figures Black examines include a crusader who “had a way of popping up almost anywhere that witchcraft accusations surfaced” in a country where pharmacies still sold magical potions with names such as “devil’s dung” until legally ordered to use “ordinary German names.”
Though of specialized interest, an eye-opening look into a corner of postwar history that seems more medieval than modern.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-22567-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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