If this seems much more a book about General McClellan, there’s good reason. The author deftly exposes his egocentric,...
Slotkin (No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864, 2009, etc.) painstakingly enumerates the instances of Gen. George McClellan’s wavering, delaying and outright disobedience of orders.
Throughout the book, the author exhibits his vast knowledge of the numerous generals involved in both sides of the conflict. McClellan was strongly in the camp of those who felt maintaining slavery in the South would end the war and, more importantly, leave him as the true savior and leader of the nation. Lincoln knew that compromise would only leave the country to fight another day. The general’s letters to his wife clearly outlined his megalomania, his delusional rages and his insistence that he was the only possible savior of the country. He even insulted the cabinet and the president by refusing to divulge his military plans. Known as the “Virginia Creeper,” McClellan knew that an early victory would allow the “radicals” to take over the war and insist on subduing the South. His outright blackmail in refusing to move his army until he received full command will make readers question why Lincoln put up with the man. Lincoln claimed he was the only capable general available. While the devotion of McClellan’s troops encouraged him as they parroted his opinions and grievances against Lincoln and others, that intense loyalty effectively barred any attempt to remove him. Slotkin’s comprehensive descriptions of the battles of 1862 show his deep understanding of the terrain, the difficulties of communication, the impossible logistics and the characters that influenced the outcome. The author includes a detailed, helpful chronology of the events of that fateful year.
If this seems much more a book about General McClellan, there’s good reason. The author deftly exposes his egocentric, messianic tendencies as he purposely prolonged the beginning of the conflict.Pub Date: July 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-871-40411-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
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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