A rare example of a gripping institutional history.
A former Peace Corps insider chronicles the history of the agency.
Meisler (Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War, 2006, etc.) left journalism to serve as a Peace Corps administrator during its formative years in the 1960s. He then returned to journalism overseas, but kept track of Corps politics and culture. Created during the presidency of John F. Kennedy and directed at first by Kennedy’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver, the Corps sent hurriedly trained American volunteers to nations across the globe, starting with Ghana and Tanzania. Meisler wisely alternates the focus among the political appointees running the Washington, D.C., headquarters, the country directors trying to fit in with embassy diplomats and the volunteers themselves, by now numbering more than 200,000. Although clearly fond of the organization’s mission, the author takes the story beyond valentine mode to discuss manipulation of the volunteers for U.S. foreign-policy purposes, crimes committed against and by the volunteers, White House occupants tone deaf to the Corps culture and unwise budget slashers within Congress. The narrative is filled with surprises, such as Meisler's positive chapter about the directorship of Loret Miller Ruppe, appointed by President Reagan, who appeared to lack even the slightest qualification for the position, given her status as a brewery heiress and the wife of a Republican congressman. However, she became a savvy, non-ideological and even beloved director. In the final chapter, the author discusses the Corps’ status during the Obama administration; Meisler approves Obama's choice as director of Aaron Williams, a former Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. In an afterword, the author grapples with the complex question, “Does the Peace Corps Do Any Good?” He answers in the affirmative, with relatively minor caveats.
A rare example of a gripping institutional history.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5049-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
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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