A detailed book that is refreshingly full of sound research rather than polemic.
An action-packed, nondidactic examination of how Israel’s special operation units rose to the challenge of the Palestinian intifada.
In a work of formidable research, Katz (Relentless Pursuit: The DSS and the Manhunt for the Al-Qaeda Terrorists, 2002, etc.) meticulously examines the makeup of the Israeli undercover anti-terrorist organizations, such as the Shin Bet and the Ya’mas (Border Guard), which infiltrated deep inside enemy lines (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem) to root out Hamas-directed Palestinian terrorists bent on making Israel “bleed.” Although not a “war,” the protracted intifada erupting between 2000 and 2008 was as bloody as any of the other numerous wars in the region, fought not on battlefields but in shopping malls and other civilian sites where suicide bombers and lone shooters wreaked havoc. Katz moves chronologically from 2000 as several specialized units were developed to meet the growing Palestinian terrorist cells, such as the tightknit Ya’mas, a diverse mix of Israeli’s minority communities, who had Arabic language and customs and could infiltrate the West Bank and elsewhere. As diplomacy broke down—most recently, the Camp David meetings between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders organized by President Bill Clinton in July 2000—tensions increased when the botched attempt to assassinate leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud aroused Palestinian ire. Conflict also followed Ariel Sharon’s well-publicized visit to the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount. Subsequently, the specialized forces met the intensified insurrection with renewed force and organization, launching Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in March 2002. Katz smoothly moves from one hot spot to another—e.g., Itamar, Jenin, Hebron, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip—following high-profile terrorists like Hamas operative Ziad Musa and delineating specifically the operations that shut down the terrorist cells and allowed the country “to maintain the semblance of day-to-day normalcy inside a country mercilessly under siege.”
A detailed book that is refreshingly full of sound research rather than polemic.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59240-901-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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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