Newspaper syndication and LIFE magazine serialization have brought a generous proportion of the text of this second volume of Churchill's war memoirs to an eager public. Nonetheless, this — in the case of The Gathering Storm — seemed only to pique interest and curiosity. This second volume covers an intensely dramatic part of Britain's struggle, as France fell, the miracle of Dunkirk stirred the world, Italy entered on the side of Germany, England's strength was rebuilt from the bottom, the air war reached and passed its peak in the Battle of Britain, strength in the Mediterranean was reestablished, the African campaign turned to victory, the invasion of Greece by Italy posed a new problem, the U.S.A. and Britain drew closer together with the destroyer- air base deal and the establishment of Lend-Lease, and the Russian alliance with Germany passed into a dubious state. Churchill shares much that we did not know at the time:-the extent of knowledge of Germany's abortive plans for invasion, the foreknowledge of Hitler's decision to attack Russia, the "deal" with Spain, the hesitancy attendant on relations with the De Gaulle forces, the "leak" that resulted in disaster in west Africa. A careful comparison of the LIFE serialization with the finished book indicates that while a better job of editing has been done, there is still in the book a flavor or the Churchill who dominated the war years that the cutting has somehow lost. In a few instances, whole facets of the story have been omitted (non-essential to the flow, but interesting for rounding it out). In one instance- possibly more- LIFE has included material omitted from the book for reasons of policy, no doubt. An essential book for those who want the war from the inside in Britain. But for some indefinable reason, this second volume lacks the verve, the zest, the heady excitement of the first. Nonetheless, a sure best seller.
Pub Date: April 4, 1949
ISBN: 0395410568
Page Count: 724
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1949
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
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