by Jeffry D. Wert ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 3, 2001
A noteworthy addition to the groaning shelves of Gettysburg books: superb narrative enriched in equal measure by careful...
From Civil War historian Wert (A Brotherhood of Valor, 1999, etc.), an astute mixture of strategic analysis and common soldiers’ narratives detailing the 24 climactic hours on which the Union hinged.
Out of 51,000 casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg, approximately one-third fell on July 3, 1863. Since then, debates on responsibility for success and failure have raged almost as heatedly as bullets on that final day. Wert’s reconsideration won’t resolve all controversies, but he sees with admirable clarity through the fog of postwar mythmaking. The historian argues that longtime Confederate scapegoat Gen. James Longstreet performed his duty (except for one momentary lapse), even though he vigorously disagreed with Robert E. Lee’s order to assault the center of the Federal line at Cemetery Ridge. Wert further points out that Lee’s vague orders and passive supervision produced poorly coordinated attacks. With clear analyses of tactics and vivid miniature portraits, he demonstrates that equally important in deciding the outcome was the skill of Union commander George Meade and such subordinates as Winfield Scott Hancock, Henry Hunt, Alexander Hays, and John Gibbon, who anticipated Confederate tactics and steadied their men amid unbelievable confusion and carnage. Although Pickett’s charge of course gets its due here, so do other crucial actions, including the daybreak fighting at Culp’s Hill, which secured the Federal position; the Confederate cannonade preceding Pickett’s charge, whose failure to damage the Union batteries doomed the infantry assault before it started; and a late-afternoon cavalry clash, which served notice on the Confederates that their Northern counterparts would match them in future engagements. Ordinary soldiers’ accounts in letters and diaries illuminate the extraordinary heroism needed to survive the bloodletting throughout the day (e.g., at one Union field hospital, surgeons had 18 amputating tables simultaneously in use).
A noteworthy addition to the groaning shelves of Gettysburg books: superb narrative enriched in equal measure by careful tactical judgment and vigorous storytelling.Pub Date: July 3, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-85914-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
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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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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