This is an extraordinarily interesting piece of the history of our times, made possible first by the fact that an excellent reporter was on the scene and lived through much of it, second by the wealth of primary source material secured at the time of the defeat and fall of the Third Reich. Hitler is, of course, the focal point, a "person of undoubted if evil genius". Shirer destroys some of the legends of his youth but traces the steps by which he came to power through the instrumentality of Eckhart, who found him a tool for his own ends. National Socialism was founded by misfits; by 1920 Hitler's talents as agitator, organizer and propagandist had brought most of the associates of stature to its ranks. The Nazification of Germany- forecast by Hitler- in Mein Kampf, consolidated in the lean years out of power, infiltrated into the armed services, engineered by a group of brilliant, ruthless opportunists, became a fait accompli before the world took Hitler seriously. All the facets are explored:- the racial laws, the persecution of Christians as well as Jews, the control of press, education, the arts, the abolishing of the separate powers of the states, of free trade unions, the steps to war while talking peace, the wizardry of Schacht's economic policy, the fooling of the people. And then, chronologically, the march of victory, while Chamberlain fumbled:- Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the deal with Russia — and World War II. To this reader this part of the book, perhaps the first two thirds, was more provocative and interesting reading than the war years. But even in the war years, Shirer injects a revealing picture of Hitler's duality. The record shows decisions made while statements to the contrary were issued; it shows division in the ranks,- between Hitler and Molotov, Hitler and Mussolini, Hitler and his own general staff, Hitler and Japan. America's part in the war was his final and fatal miscalculation. Throughout, sharp pen pictures of what life in the Third Reich was like should help keep the world from forgetting. A book not only for reference, but for absorbed reading. As November choice of the Book-of-the-Month, it should be an immediate success.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1960
ISBN: 1451651686
Page Count: 1249
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1960
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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