A vivid history of the long campaign against the Dragon’s Jaw Bridge; especially recommended for aficionados of air warfare.
The detailed story of American pilots’ attempts to destroy a key bridge during the Vietnam War.
Bestselling novelist and decorated Navy aviator Coonts (The Armageddon File, 2017, etc.) teams up with air warfare historian Tillman (On Wave and Wing: The 100 Year Quest to Perfect the Aircraft Carrier, 2017, etc.) for an account that looks well past its nominal subject to give a wide-ranging history of the Vietnam War in the air. The Thanh Hoa bridge, completed in 1964, got the name “Dragon’s Jaw” from the rock formations on which it was built. Carrying a highway and a railroad line, it was a strategic transportation link as well as a matter of national pride for North Vietnam. As such, the bridge became an important target for American forces. But its robust construction—and the defensive measures around it—made it an infuriatingly resistant target. The authors detail one assault after another, listing pilots killed or captured in the attempt and providing the stories of those who attacked it without success. Coonts’ novelistic skills make the set pieces compelling, and attentive readers will get an education in the evolving technology of air warfare and anti-aircraft defense. The narrative is especially memorable for its account of the naval aviators who launched their attacks from carriers, many of whom are quoted at length. The authors also draw on North Vietnamese records, though with a degree of skepticism. At the same time, they are scathing in their attack on American leaders, especially Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, for their failure to press the air war as hard as they might have out of fear of bringing Chinese troops into the conflict. Several bombing halts gave the North time to build up its forces and launch offensives. In the end, advances in weaponry gave the bombers the edge they needed to bring down the bridge—though it took years of relentless attacks and the loss of numerous planes and pilots to do so.
A vivid history of the long campaign against the Dragon’s Jaw Bridge; especially recommended for aficionados of air warfare.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-306-90347-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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 Yorkerstaff 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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