A unique account of the liberation of the City of Light.
Intriguing perspectives that balance myths and realities about the occupation and liberation of Paris during World War II.
Historian and former foreign correspondent Bishop, author of Operation Jubilee, presents a sweeping depiction of the occupation by, and liberation from, Nazi forces in Paris in 1944. The author conducted an extraordinary amount of research for this book, and his experience living and working in Paris as a newspaper correspondent adds a valuable sensibility to the narrative, particularly in his analysis of the political and social contexts of prewar Paris and the stark privation and fear endured by Parisians at the hands of the Nazis. The author examines Paris as a fixed idea or concept of high artistic and cultural stability in the minds of people around the world, how the impact of its capture by Hitler seemed to extinguish a light in the world, and the profoundly gleeful celebration upon that light rekindling. He tells this story through the eyes of several artistic and literary figures such as Picasso, Salinger, and Hemingway, famous and unknown fighters in the French Resistance, and the leaders of Vichy France and Charles de Gaulle, who “understood brilliantly the power that the city on the Seine exercised over the world’s imagination.” At times, the number of people Bishop profiles are so numerous that a roster or scorecard seems necessary, and some readers may wish for a more succinctly vivid description of occupied Paris, like that found in Mark Helprin's novel Paris in the Present Tense. Still, Bishop effectively weaves the various and oftentimes intersecting stories into a fascinating and enlightening narrative that serves as an entertaining social history of World War II–era Paris. The book includes maps, illustrations, and extensive source notes for each chapter.
A unique account of the liberation of the City of Light.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781639367030
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
HISTORY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD
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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