Third in the four volume history of the war, and the one most intimately concerned with strategy and Britain's terrific responsibility in carrying on virtual global warfare single handed. A personal history as any book from Churchill's pen is sure to be he overrides the difficulties of the war in terms of its campaigns and planning for the layman. Pungent phrase, dramatic sense of values, a prose that marches — these stylistic factors make it good reading even when the subject matter seems tenuous and overdrawn. Throughout the text is spiced with his very personal views of men and events. There are superb tributes to a few, Harry Hopkins conspicuously among them, and, interestingly enough, the German general, Rommel. There's a very evident irritation against some of Britain's historic military figures, Wavell and Auchinleck, for instance, are now high, now low in his esteem. Of Wavell, some months before he was shifted to the Indian command, and Auchinleck put in his place, he writes:- "He gives the impression of being tired out". He blew hot and cold on Auchinleck, feeling him too cautious, too inclined to delay. Much of the argument that went on between the Admiralty, the home office, and the forces on the scene, is here told in detail for the first time. The handling of the Greek affair- the disaster in Crete- the African ports and the campaign of which Tobruk was the crux- the defense of Malta — all these come in for extensive off the record, in many cases, reporting. Few actual closeups- the Cretan campaign perhaps the closest to that- but an all pervading sense, on the part of the reader, of being at the heart of the matter. The revealing analysis of the difficulties with Stalin, the falsities of the public viewpoint, the burden of sharing from what was little enough, the lack of appreciation of the contribution made to the Soviet defense- all seems perceptive and prescient today. The book includes the inception of the Atlantic Charter, the historic meeting with Roosevelt, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Christmas visit of Churchill to the White House. These volumes from Mr. Churchill's pen constitute an important segment in source material on the Second World War. While this is not such easy reading as the two earlier volumes, there is an enormous amount of thrilling contemporary history encompassed in this period of victory beginning to seem possible out of disaster and defeat.
Pub Date: April 24, 1950
ISBN: 0395410576
Page Count: 853
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1950
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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