A crisp assessment of a warrior who perfected the doctrine of striking at the enemy’s economic resources and will to resist,...
A fast-paced look at the military career of Grant’s most trusted, effective subordinate, the latest from the publisher’s handy Great Generals Series.
Woodworth (History/Texas Christian Univ.; Nothing But Victory, 1861-1865, The Army of the Tennessee, 2005, etc.) quickly dispenses with William Tecumseh Sherman’s Ohio boyhood and his time at West Point, where he proved a popular, intellectually superior cadet, while accumulating a raft of demerits. After a series of pedestrian postings—he discontentedly sat out the Mexican War in California, from where he officially reported to the government the discovery of gold in 1849—he left the army at his wife’s insistence. Only modestly successful as a businessman, he happily presided over the Louisiana Military Seminary at the outbreak of the Civil War. After distinguishing himself at the Union disaster of Bull Run and disgracing himself in command of the Department of the Cumberland, Sherman teamed with Grant to form a brilliant partnership, from Shiloh to Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta and, of course, the famed March to the Sea that made “Georgia howl.” Although Grant favored direct attack on the enemy’s army, and Sherman the destruction of communications, transportation and means of equipping and supporting that army, Grant relied on his lieutenant’s coolness in combat, his special talent as a defensive commander and his skillful handling of personnel to execute the grand plan of defeating the Confederacy. Although he addresses “Uncle Billy’s” shortcomings as a commander, Woodworth focuses on Sherman’s refinement of maneuver warfare—the practice of avoiding the enemy’s strength, concentrating on his weakness, turning the opponent and forcing him to choose between retreat or fighting at a disadvantage. The author briefly summarizes Sherman’s postwar career, but the spotlight remains on the big battles and Sherman’s superb generalship.
A crisp assessment of a warrior who perfected the doctrine of striking at the enemy’s economic resources and will to resist, making the South so sick of war “that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-230-61024-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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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