Excellent general WWII accounts abound—including those by historical superstars such as Stephen Ambrose and John Keegan—but...
A World War II history by Hastings (Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940–1945, 2010, etc.) may seem like a tautology, but readers familiar with his previous books will expect an enthralling account of his favorite subject. They will not be disappointed.
This time, the author emphasizes personal experiences as well as his often squirm-inducing opinions. Most startling—but not really controversial—he maintains that the Wehrmacht outclassed all other armies. The Allies, including the Soviets, never won a battle without vast superiority in men and material. However, he writes, the democracies were smarter. American industry operated more efficiently, took better advantage of science and paid more attention to logistics. German and Japanese troops regularly starved and rationed ammunition. In addition, U.S. intelligence services performed superbly, the enemies’ dreadfully. Readers will perk up at Hastings’ claim that Hitler’s second greatest mistake, after invading Russia, was launching the Battle of Britain. If he had allowed Britain to stew for months after its humiliating defeat, Churchill would have had great difficulty sustaining national morale or fending off pressure to make a peace, which would have eliminated not only Britain but America as a threat. Most general histories sprinkle their pages with anecdotes, but Hastings has this down to a science. He employs numerous specialists, delving into Russian and Italian archives and personally tracking down obscure, vivid, often painful stories from the usual combatants as well as Poles, Bengalese, Chinese and Japanese.
Excellent general WWII accounts abound—including those by historical superstars such as Stephen Ambrose and John Keegan—but Hastings is matchless.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-27359-8
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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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