Provides thorough coverage of a deserving subject.
Passionate biography of a Founding Father whose legacy exists in the shadow of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, but who played an equally vital role in the creation of the United States.
Born in England, Robert Morris (1734–1806) moved to the American continent at a young age and used a small inheritance to become a wealthy merchant. Although not a revolutionary by disposition, the proud Philadelphian believed that the British crown had overstepped its power, and he became active in both the formation of individual state governments and pushed for the controversial notion of a federal entity that could raise its own money. As the Revolutionary War dragged on, George Washington and other generals could not adequately clothe, feed or pay their troops, who threatened mutiny. Using his contacts and knowledge developed as an import-export businessman, Morris dealt with emissaries from France and other foreign nations, as well as leaders in each of the original states, raising millions of dollars and procuring shipments of badly needed gunpowder as if by magic. Investigative journalist Rappleye (Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution, 2006, etc.) demonstrates that behind the seeming magic, Morris labored mightily, sometimes at great cost to his beloved wife and their brood of children, as well as the near loss of his psychological equilibrium. In a nascent republic beset by political, geographical and personal rivalries, Morris became the object of suspicion by some, who accused him of enriching himself at the expense of the new nation. He worked hard for years to clear his name of those allegations and succeeded for the most part. However, his unwise land speculation after the war led to the loss of his fortune and time in jail before his death. In fluid prose, Rappleye ably resurrects an underrated contributor to the early American republic.
Provides thorough coverage of a deserving subject.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7091-2
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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