Solid in-depth reporting with a polemical kick.
The hidden story behind one of the toughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
The “Killing Fields’’ of the title may sound melodramatic, but it was the longtime nickname of East New York, where redlining and blockbusting fostered white flight and subprime subterfuges cheated residents out of their homes and safety. It’s a badly needed look at a societal problem that goes largely unaddressed while politicians outdo each other with tough-on-crime rhetoric. Author and journalist Horn sets the stage with the violent death in 1991 of Julia Parker, a 17-year-old girl suspected of talking to the police about the death of a friend. The author jumps back to 1966 to describe the simmering racial tensions fueled by a group called SPONGE (Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything), described as “the Proud Boys of their day.” Ultimately, Mayor John Lindsay’s office had to reach out to Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Genovese problem to negotiate a temporary truce. Horn guides readers through a subprime Ponzi scheme scandal that predated the Bush-era crisis. Landlords and mortgage banks swindled the community, offering loans for substandard housing with minimal background checks. “If the homeowners defaulted, the FHA [Federal Housing Authority] would repay the loan,’’ she writes. Many FHA officials were themselves corrupt, taking payoffs, ultimately resulting in indictments—and convictions—when investigators in the U.S. Attorney’s office caught on to the scam. But Julia Parker, like countless others, was caught in the crossfire. More recently, life in East New York is improving, with fewer food “ghettos” and more community gardens than anywhere else in the city. But Horn provides an invaluable roadmap to how, and why, urban “renewal’’ can go tragically wrong.
Solid in-depth reporting with a polemical kick.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781638931225
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gillian Flynn/Zando
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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