A controversial, insightful work from Poland’s 2013 journalist of the year.
Impassioned, insightful snapshots of life in pre–Velvet Revolution Czechoslovakia.
Winner of the 2009 European Book Prize, acclaimed Polish journalist Szczygiel’s well-researched, unsunny volume of “mostly true stories” forms an indelible impression of the Czech population. His glimpses encapsulate the struggles of these hardscrabble citizens prior to the nation’s liberation in 1993, with strength and resilience as the operative themes threaded throughout. The sweeping opening biography focuses on the rise of innovative Czech entrepreneur Tomas Bata, who revolutionized the shoe manufacturing business using the Henry Ford assembly-line production model. The author also profiles the tangled life of actress Lida Baarova, who, for two years during her early 20s, became the mistress of Joseph Goebbels, the “Minister of Propaganda” for Hitler's National Socialist government. Also of note are creatively drawn portrayals of struggling pop singer Marta Kubisova, whose songs were censored and removed from public consumption, and a poignant report on the life of teenage Prague student Zdenek Adamec, who became increasingly appalled by the conditions in the Czech Republic and committed public suicide by self-immolation. Szczygiel explores the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in searing pieces revealing the true extent of the mass liquidation of “anything that brings simple pleasure” to the public. The author also offers an inventive take on the metamorphosis of the “Cubist personality” of provocative writer Eduard Kirchberger into pseudonym “Karel Fabian.” All of these congruous pieces create a patchwork tapestry of Central European history. Whether chronicling the sculpting of Prague’s monument to Joseph Stalin or the dubious allegiances of writer Jan Prochazka, the atmosphere Szczygiel evokes is glumly foreboding yet intensely interesting.
A controversial, insightful work from Poland’s 2013 journalist of the year.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61219-313-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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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