Students of geopolitics and South Asia will find this a valuable book.
The history of the multigenerational Pakistani political family that continues to influence events in the nation today.
It has long been assumed that the assassination of Pakistan’s prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, in 2007 was undertaken at the hands of the army. However, former BBC correspondent Bennett-Jones lays the blame instead at the door of the Taliban, which objected to her liberalizing policies and support for women and religious minorities. Even before the Taliban, Osama bin Laden himself threatened her. (Shortly before her death, she sent a note to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, writing of a military and political rival, “I would hold Musharraf responsible.”) The author’s account of Bhutto’s assassination by suicide bomb, though gruesome, is comprehensive. So is his study of the Bhutto lineage, which well merits the title of dynasty, beginning with the pre-Partition Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, who, “like many Indian aristocrats, readily accepted the authority of his colonial masters, working closely with them and even aping their habits.” His son Zulfikar Bhutto became prime minister while Benazir was studying abroad; he “articulated Pakistan’s aspiration to be a successful country independent of the West, leading the Islamic world and matching Indian power, both conventional and nuclear.” When she came to power, serving as prime minister twice, Benazir placed the army and democracy in stark contrast, though she was a practitioner of realpolitik enough to know that she would have to yield to the military’s demands for power and essentially unlimited funding. The issues that each of these rulers contended with, Bennett-Jones argues, are central to the development of a Pakistan that, while ostensibly democratic, is never far away from military rule. The author enumerates some of the controversies that the Bhutto family engendered, not just as political reformers, but also as adherents to the Sufi branch of Islam. Bennett-Jones closes by identifying Bhutto scions who might continue the lineage into Pakistani politics, one of them a “poet, visual artist and sometimes cross-dressing performer in San Francisco.”
Students of geopolitics and South Asia will find this a valuable book.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-24667-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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 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
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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