Authoritative and colorful—a must-read account of the initial phase of the war in the Pacific.
A focused look at the first six months of World War II in the Pacific, drawing on government documents and interviews with veterans.
Cleaver admits to a fascination with the Pacific war since his early school days, and it shows in the depth in which he examines the battlefield details. The author, who has written multiple books on the Pacific theater, puts special emphasis on naval aviation, which was the dominant mode of action at the time. The second chapter, describing U.S. and Japanese preparedness for the war, includes accounts of the development of the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber and the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, two of the iconic warplanes of the era. At times, the catalogs of how many planes of which types took part in a given attack may stretch the patience of general readers, though this type of data will thrill military history buffs. Cleaver amply makes up for any slow bits with comments from and anecdotes by many of those who took part—on both sides. The author includes quotes from Eisenhower’s diaries and Roosevelt’s speeches and battle accounts from American and Japanese servicemen along with contemporaneous news reports to show what the general public was being told about the campaign. Cleaver has strong opinions about many aspects of the Pacific war, including a negative judgment of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s performance in the defense of the Philippines, one evidently shared by many of those in the field at the time. The author’s diligent research and careful citation of sources give his opinions considerable weight; as a result, the book deserves attention from anyone interested in the difficult months between the disaster of Pearl Harbor and the triumph of Midway.
Authoritative and colorful—a must-read account of the initial phase of the war in the Pacific.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4728-4133-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | UNITED STATES | WORLD
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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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