Like our own century's headlong rush to own the Bomb, European powers in the late-19th century raced to acquire colonies in Africa. Now, in a comprehensive and certain-to-be-standard account of this ``scramble,'' Pakenham (The Boer War, 1979) describes the motives and methods of what Bismarck called ``the colonial whirl.'' For Pakenham, the ``scramble'' began with the death of David Livingstone, the great missionary and explorer. Horrified by the new slave trade, organized by the Arabs and their African allies, that was destroying the heart of his beloved continent, the dying Livingstone pleaded for the three ``Cs''—Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization—to join in a worldwide crusade to root out the evil. But a fourth ``C''—Conquest—was added, and though the original ideals were never lost, they were often secondary to realpolitik and greed. Villains, heroes, rogues—each responded to the call in his own fashion, but ``all conceived of it in terms of romantic nationalism.'' There was Stanley, the consummate self- promoter; King Leopold II of Belgium, who made the Congo his personal fief; the idiosyncratic General Gordon, sacrificed to the Mahdi; and a large cast of other luminaries. In alternating chapters, Pakenham describes the individual European powers' ventures and misadventures in a continent that, in reality, was incapable of ever fulfilling their grandiose expectations. Indeed, no one except the wily Leopold, who stashed his gains in a hidden bank account, really came out ahead. And what of the Africans themselves, who were to be saved by the three Cs? Pakenham's answer is unfashionably Panglossian: Europe gave a continent in thrall to slave traders and despots ``the aspirations for freedom and human dignity, the humanitarian ideals of Livingstone, even if Europe was seldom able to live up to them.'' More anecdotal than analytical, but a spirited and intelligent history of one of the most seminal events in Africa, whose legacy is not yet spent. (Thirty-two pages of b&w photographs, 25 maps— not seen.)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-51576-5
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
HISTORY | MODERN | 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 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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
