PositiveLibrary JournalMeticulously, relentlessly, Buruma dissects these collaborators’ contradictory and self-serving accounts and cross-references with other sources to get closer to the truth ... A powerful exploration of complicity, ambivalence, and the human capacity for deception and self-rationalization.
Kevin Cook
PositiveLibrary Journal... fast-paced, vivid retelling ... Cook excoriates the government’s handling of the situation but also leaves no doubt about the toxicity of the sect and its leader ... Squeezed into a couple of final chapters, this analysis of Waco’s ramifications deserves a whole book unto itself ... Thrilling, evenhanded, and liable to resonate with readers drawn to true crime and current events.
Efrén C Olivares
PositiveLibrary Journal... a heartfelt first-person exposé of America’s broken immigration system ... Especially moving is the story of a father forced to take a DNA test to prove that his little daughter was truly his. The author’s compassion is clear, though autobiographical elements can dampen these stories’ moral urgency, and the two halves of his narrative do not always cohere ... Readers will appreciate this memoir as a moving firsthand account but also as a call to action to ensure that human rights prevail at America’s borders.
Sally Denton
PositiveLibrary JournalRiveting, insightful, ripped from the headlines, this should appeal to fans of true crime and of Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy
RaveLibrary JournalScott-Clark and Levy’s focused and authoritative work was a key source for Alex Gibney’s 2021 HBO documentary of the same title ... A tour de force of investigative journalism.
William Neuman
PositiveLibrary Journal... a searing indictment of the Venezuelan petro-state ... Neuman denounces Chávez and Maduro but gives the conservative opposition and U.S. foreign policy their fair share of criticism as well. Neuman, who lived in Caracas for years, writes lyrically and uses in-depth interviews and reflections to put individual faces to Venezuela’s dissolving bonds of fellowship. However, his ham-fisted metaphors and patronizing comments sometimes detract from the book’s geopolitical insights and heartfelt laments ... A riveting personal exploration of Venezuela’s slow-moving collapse.
A.J. Baime
RaveLibrary JournalBaime tells White\'s story with verve, clarity, and perspicacity. The result holds its own with more scholarly biographies of White from Kenneth Janken (2003) and Robert Zangrando and Ronald Lewis (2019) ... A riveting profile of a little-studied Black civil rights leader.
Volker Ullrich tr. Jefferson Chase
PositiveLibrary JournalUllrich provides a sweeping view of Germany’s collapse: he documents the regime’s last-minute power struggles, sexual violence and plundering inflicted by the Soviet army, death marches and massacres of prisoners of war and forced laborers by diehard Nazis, and brutal sieges and battles. Most intriguingly, he recounts the formation of postwar German leadership ... Less magisterial than Ullrich’s two-volume Hitler biography, this slimmer work is still expertly researched and written ... Ullrich offers little new information or critical insights, but his book delivers to historians of all stripes a lean and perceptive survey of the last week of the Third Reich.
Marilyn Brookwood
RaveLibrary JournalWith this riveting history of an unsung scientific breakthrough in the 1930s, psychologist Brookwood tells how U.S. state and federal governments, backed by mainstream psychologists, had for decades enforced eugenicist policies ... A remarkable unsung history, told with empathy, nuance, and a knack for character-driven storytelling.
Julian Sancton
PositiveLibrary JournalSancton gives this extraordinary saga its first book-length treatment ... Belying its sensational title, this detail-rich account is a sober and humane chronicle of relationships among the explorers and their struggle for survival in the long polar night. Armchair travelers will enjoy.
Louis Menand
MixedLibrary JournalMenand is an academic who writes accessibly despite his book’s extensive citations and overall length ... Readers of The New Yorker or The Atlantic will appreciate this detailed look into the Cold War. This sweeping synthesis evinces a polymath’s range and grasp but treads familiar ground with its focus on the Western canon.
Charles J. Hanley
RaveLibrary JournalHanley is back with [a]...compelling and groundbreaking narrative history of the Korean War ... An extraordinary kaleidoscope of human experiences in a catastrophic forgotten war.
Miles Harvey
RaveLibrary JournalHarvey has penned a tour de force of popular history. Light on deep or original historical analysis, this work recounts Strang\'s colorful story ... A spirited, entertaining read with a twist of insight and a tang of scandal.
Steven Johnson
PositiveLibrary JournalJohnson weaves a tapestry of treasure, tribunals, emperors, atrocities, and a pirate’s life at sea ... Consummate popular history: fast-paced, intelligent, and entertaining.
William C. Davis
MixedLibrary JournalDavis indulges in detail, caught up in the minutiae of who shot whom and the precise circumstances of the battle. Exhaustive endnotes conclude this staunchly traditional military history that gives shorter shrift to geopolitical and cultural context, including the rich, complex relations among blacks, whites, freedmen, Spaniards, creoles, and Anglos in the melting pot of New Orleans ... Extensively researched, tediously old-school military history.
Marie Arana
MixedLibrary JournalBlood, treasure, and faith define Latin America, according to this detailed, elegant, lightweight history by Arana ... She...uses the nitty-gritty details of history to make her points ... Arana suggests Latin American bloodshed and tyranny to be inevitable...hammering home a stereotype of Latin America as uncivilized and intractably so ... This polished narrative with a rigid thematic structure lacks space for deeper nuance and context. Readers seeking a general history of Latin American should opt for Chasteen\'s Born in Blood and Fire.
David Roberts
PositiveLibrary Journal...a road trip that is unexciting, but the personal element is poignant ... Recently diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, Roberts treats this trip—and book—as his swan song ... this work breathes new life into a centuries-old journey.
Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna
RaveLibrary JournalThis new history is long overdue ... but future historians may wish to contextualize Shining Path in relation to other leftist rebels who emerged or endured after the fall of the Soviet Union ... Meticulously researched and broadly appealing—the best popular history yet of the Shining Path.
Aaron Shulman
PositiveLibrary Journal[The Paneros\'] family saga provides insight into 20th-century Spain, torn between dictatorship and democracy ... Part history, part melodrama, and sure to entertain public library patrons attracted to family biographies or Spain.
Alfredo Corchado
RaveLibrary JournalCorchado and his friends are not representative of all Mexican Americans, but in terms of humanizing Mexican immigration and exploring Mexican American \'in-betweenness,\' this work is successful and necessary ... A sensitive, thought-provoking self-portrait of Mexican Americans who, wherever they go, call the borderlands home.
