Two centuries of German history are brought into focus through the lens of a strategically placed, highly interesting family. American journalist Friedrich's (Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet, 1992, etc.) 14th book takes up the aristocratic von Moltke clan. The family first came to international prominence with General Field Marshal Helmuth Count von Moltke, the great military strategist and architect of Prussian victories over the Austrians (1866) and the French (187071). Friedrich tarries perhaps too long over the tactical details of famous battles and not long enough on the mind of this remarkable man. And occasionally the more vivid personality of Otto von Bismarck runs away with the show. Bismarck gets all the good lines, as when he likens the way he manages the Prussian sovereign to handling a balky horse who ``takes fright at an unaccustomed object, will grow obstinate if driven, but will gradually get used to it.'' Von Moltke was by contrast a man of few words. Though other von Moltkes crop up here and there, the book's remaining third is mainly concerned with the field marshal's heroic descendant, Helmuth James von Moltke. A man of clear mind, independent conscience, and firm resolve, this von Moltke opposed Hitler and the Nazis and hoped to help steer Germany back on the track of decency. He was at the center of a resistance group that plotted the assassination of Hitler, though von Moltke himself was opposed to the killing. In 1944 the Gestapo arrested him, and after being found guilty of treason, he was executed in 1945. He is survived by his wife, Freya von Moltke, who was a principal source for Friedrich's account. Friedrich's emphasis on only two members of the family, together with the rather more vivid presence of Bismarck, gives the book a sense of unbalance. Though often engaging, it does not finally cohere as the story of a whole family. (maps and photos, not seen).
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-016866-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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