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THE GENERALS' WAR

THE INSIDE STORY OF THE CONFLICT IN THE GULF

A candid and gripping look at military leaders interacting with one another and with sensitive allies under enormous pressure during the Gulf War. Using recently declassified documents, New York Times chief Pentagon correspondent Gordon and retired three-star Marine general and military consultant Trainor give readers an inside perspective on tense top-level meetings that shaped the outcome of the Gulf War. Iraq, they argue, was armed by the West as a buffer against Iran. But when Saddam Hussein menaced the world's richest oil reserves in Kuwait, the West, led by President Bush, formed an unlikely United Nations coalition against Iraq that included other Arab nations. Though facing political, economic, military, and logistical problems, the coalition, in the authors' view, was able to take action in time to save the vital oil reserves. Gordon and Trainor draw insightful sketches of many leading players in the drama, especially generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwartzkopf. Powell, skeptical of air power, emerges as the astute politician, while Schwartzkopf appears imperious, unimaginative, and apolitical, often venting his volcanic temper on subordinates but painfully reluctant to shed his men's blood. In fact, the authors depict Schwartzkopf, contrary to Powell, as favoring a long and less deadly (to Americans) air war followed by a quick but militarily overwhelming ground war. But like Meade at Gettysburg, they claim, ``Schwartzkopf defeated his enemy, but allowed him to escape to make further mischief.'' In addition, Gordon and Trainor contend that while the Gulf War comforted the Arab world, Bush failed to envision a clear strategy for dealing with postwar Iraq, allowing Saddam Hussein to endure and to destroy Shiite and Kurdish rebels. A fine narrative history, written in a style suggesting a Tom Clancy thriller, that fills the void left by superficial media reporting.

Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1995

ISBN: 0-316-32172-9

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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