A vivid account that capably illuminates the evils half-hidden under a flickering torch.
In-depth history of the murderous white supremacist march on the Virginia city in 2017.
“There is a direct path from the Unite the Right rally of August 12, 2017, to the Stop the Steal insurrection of January 6, 2021,” writes native daughter Baker, who returned to her hometown after many years to explore that connection. The proximate cause of the rally, marked by polo-and-khaki-clad, mostly young men chanting against Jews, immigrants, and other perceived enemies, was the planned removal of a statue honoring Robert E. Lee—who, Baker sagely notes, never visited the city. The rally brought that white supremacist crowd, full of neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis, into the progressive home of the University of Virginia and a town with a Jewish mayor and large Black population. At the helm of the alt-right marchers was the supremely ambitious Richard Spencer, with a network of ex-military militia recruited from far afield—just like that Jan. 6 crowd. Charlottesville had long been a locus of racial enmity: As Baker notes, the Lee statue was a deliberate provocation. So, too, was the march, courtesy of the ACLU’s contesting against a city-imposed ban on it. The result led to the book’s concluding event: a young man “who kept a framed photograph of Hitler and a copy of Mein Kampf by his bedside” drove into a crowd, killed a woman named Heather Heyer, and injured many others. Populating her account with the likes of violence-bent if often inept men whom she dubs Swastika Pin, Tampa Realtor, Red Shirt, and the like—their real identities later exposed through careful investigation—Baker demonstrates the despicable falsity of Donald Trump’s saying that there “were very fine people, on both sides”—and shows how coordinated resistance against white supremacists both can work and will be required again in the coming years.
A vivid account that capably illuminates the evils half-hidden under a flickering torch.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781644453414
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
