In chronicling the daring activity that went on for years, Grose keeps readers on edge with a heartwarming story of ordinary...
In his American debut, Grose tells a little-known story of a pacifist pastor and the heroic Huguenot population of a plateau in France. These are the ordinary people of a handful of parishes who saved thousands from the Nazis.
Word spread quickly that the villages around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon would help not only Jews, but also illegal aliens and young men avoiding deportation to Germany’s factories. Perhaps it was the Huguenot background of persecution that fostered a people who kept secrets, minded their own business and helped their fellow sufferers. When André Trocmé took over as pastor from Charles Guillon, he preached nonviolent resistance and love of one's enemies. The plateau was a popular summer vacation spot and had little other attraction. There were no minerals, agriculture or wine production, which a nation at war might requisition, so it was effectively a safe haven. As a vacation spot, it had a wealth of guesthouses and hotels. All the pieces fell into place for the plateau after Trocmé met a Quaker who convinced him to take in children released from prison camps. Guillon moved to Geneva, where he was able to channel cash from American Quakers into the area. Oscar Rosowsky, an 18-year-old Latvian typewriter repairman, was a master forger, and Virginia Hall, an American spy, arranged for parachute supply drops after D-Day. In addition, some of the most important players in this operation were the Boy Scouts. Trocmé and many of his guides were Scouts with survival skills, and they were able to lead escapees safely to Switzerland. Almost everyone in the region took in at least one refugee, and they were so discreet that few neighbors knew of the others’ actions. The author ably narrates this inspiring story of “the courage and leadership of some remarkable men and women.”
In chronicling the daring activity that went on for years, Grose keeps readers on edge with a heartwarming story of ordinary heroes who just did what was required.Pub Date: April 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-692-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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
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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