A solid, journalistic treatment of commercial and political history, of a piece with Tom Miller’s Trading with the Enemy...
A refreshing history of the folks who brought the world the Cuba libre, and who agitate for a Cuba libre even today.
The Bacardi rum dynasty is now headquartered in Puerto Rico, but its origins are Cuban—and, writes NPR correspondent Gjelten (Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege, 1995), Cuban of a particular kind, nationalistic and proud. The 19th-century residents of Santiago were mostly Catalan businesspeople and artisans who, contrary to countless stereotypes, were renowned for their work ethic and thriftiness. The Bacardi empire grew from a small shop, spearheaded by a light, dry, tasty rum that “became the drink of choice…just as Cuba was becoming a nation.” Thereafter it was tied up, in a complicated way, with Cuban self-identity, celebrated by Hemingway and by countless Cuban intellectuals, diplomats and even dissidents. Indeed, writes Gjelten, the far-flung Bacardi family was also well known for standing in opposition to the various tinhorn tyrants who followed independence, notably Fulgencio Batista. In a nicely ironic moment, Gjelten observes that Batista, a former army sergeant, came to power thanks to American fears of a Communist Cuba in the 1930s. The Bacardis were progressive and seemingly incorruptible, which put them at odds with that reactionary, thoroughly corrupt regime. They also ran afoul, however, of Fidel Castro, whom most of the Bacardis supported to some degree or another, but who moved to nationalize the rum industry. In the bargain, Fidel made of the Bacardis a powerful foe—though, like most Cubans in exile, its members “repeatedly misjudged conditions in Cuba and made erroneous predictions,” particularly on the matter of when Castro would leave office and his revolution would collapse.
A solid, journalistic treatment of commercial and political history, of a piece with Tom Miller’s Trading with the Enemy (1992), Ann Louise Bardach’s Cuba Confidential (2002) and other studies of the island.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-01978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
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 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
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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