An engrossing account of the author’s own experiences written to justify questionable foreign policy that many readers will...
A controversial defense of the 2003 military intervention in Iraq that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Basile—a Forbes opinion contributor, faculty member of Fordham University, and principal of the New York–based strategic communications firm Empire Solutions—combines a vivid account of his on-the-ground experience in Iraq as senior press adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003 to 2004 with an exploration of the political issues that were involved in the Bush administration’s decision to remove Hussein from power. “The coalition wasn’t merely engaged in a fight to build a more participatory society against incredible odds,” he writes. “It was also in a constant clash with forces that affected public perception about the mission.” The author contends that the need to shape public opinion is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the Iraq mission. Although the ostensible justification of the military intervention—the claim that Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction and the existence of a link between his regime and al-Qaida—proved to be false, Basile believes that the war was justified, a wake-up call that alerted us to the danger posed by terrorist groups. However, as the author writes, the “failure to win the media and communications war in Iraq” has left the U.S. more vulnerable “against ISIS and its affiliates.” The merits of the author’s argument are debatable, but his personal account of his experiences reporting the war is gripping. The author rightly points out that confidence in government and media reporting are near all-time lows, creating “a toxic blend that leads to the erosion of citizen-controlled government in the United States.” Basile faults President Barack Obama for downplaying the role of Islamic terrorism and failing to make “the tough sell” needed to maintain a foreign policy that would guarantee “our ability to lead on the world stage.”
An engrossing account of the author’s own experiences written to justify questionable foreign policy that many readers will question.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61234-900-8
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Potomac Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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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