An appealing introduction, aimed at a wide audience, to events that continue to shape global affairs.
Newsweek associate editor Sebestyen (Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, 2009, etc.) unravels the cataclysmic changes brought about by the end of World War II.
The author, a foreign correspondent whose family fled Communist Hungary, describes 1946 as “the year that laid the foundation of the modern world.” In the aftermath of the war, “vast populations had been forced to uproot in the biggest refugee crisis the world had ever seen. Hitler had dreamed of an ethnically pure Europe. Paradoxically, Germany’s defeat ensured that by the end of 1946 his dream was, to a great extent, a reality.” Coupled with the devastation in Europe, the postwar period witnessed the birth of Israel, the dissolution of the Indian subcontinent, the rises of America and the Soviet Union, the final stages of the civil war in China, and the democratic transition in Japan. Sebestyen is a witty storyteller with a wide-ranging intellect, and his fast-paced yet expansive style will appeal even to readers with little taste for history. Though very much a big-picture narrative, the book is liberally peppered with fascinating asides and anecdotes that humanize its subjects. Emperor Hirohito’s declaration that he was a human rather than a god was instrumental in moving the Japanese populace into the modern era, but less well known is the fact that it was “drafted by a mid-level officer of the American Occupation authority.” Iconoclastic at times, the author is not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom or topple sacred cows. Churchill, for instance, “was not entirely an innocent bystander, or even only a bit-part player [in the Yalta Accords]. He helped to build the Iron Curtain from Stettin to Trieste.” Ultimately, the lesson is that the vicissitudes of fate are unpredictable, and even the best-laid plans are quickly overtaken by reality.
An appealing introduction, aimed at a wide audience, to events that continue to shape global affairs.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-87042-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2015
HISTORY | MODERN | UNITED STATES | 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
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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