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THOMAS JEFFERSON'S EDUCATION

A book that refreshingly adds real substance to the abundant literature on Jefferson.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning historian enlightens us on the mindset of Colonial Virginia through Thomas Jefferson’s drive to change the education system.

Beginning with young Jefferson’s student days at the College of William & Mary, Taylor (History/Univ. of Virginia; American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, 2016, etc.) describes a church-run school whose students had little or no interest in learning; few stayed long enough for a degree. They were irreverent and defiant, and they drank, gambled, fought, and even destroyed church and town property in drunken riots. Due to certain entrenched rules about honor, no Southern gentleman would testify against a fellow student. Within this milieu, Taylor depicts Jefferson as a man trained from childhood to exercise sovereign authority over slaves. Jefferson felt slavery was wrong in principal but essential in practice, and his abolition plan could only work with deportation. Officials in Virginia used the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of free exercise of religion to ban state assistance to churches and repealed the incorporation of the Episcopalian Church. This included cutting funding and eliminating the parish tax. Jefferson fully supported this secularization and planned to use those savings and taxes for a public education system. His master plan included primary schools, including girls, and colleges (secondary) run by each county feeding one university—at Charlottesville. His schools were to be absolutely secular, and while rejecting leadership by blood, he ensured that class distinctions remained, seeking enlightened aristocrats of merit. The narrative bogs down a bit at the end with the history of the university, but Taylor is a master historian, and he delivers a highly illuminating account in which “Jefferson’s social context in Virginia looms even larger than his unique personality and career achievements.” Furthermore, the author plumbs the depths of his subject’s objectives, faults, and ideals.

A book that refreshingly adds real substance to the abundant literature on Jefferson.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-393-65242-0

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019

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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.

Awards & Accolades

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller


  • National Book Award Finalist

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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