A relevant, fiery, and dizzying treatise certain to provoke debate and discussion.
A provocative report on the progress of LGBTQ rights.
The driving force behind Duberman’s (The Rest of It: Cocaine, Hustlers, Depression, and Then Some, 1976-1988, 2018, etc.) astute, briskly written analysis is his “limited satisfaction with what most gay people are hailing as the speediest success story in all of our country’s long history of social protest.” After rereading the 1972 anthology Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation, Duberman became inspired to argue against the current complacency of the culture which he believes has been resting on the successes of marriage liberties and limited civil rights. He highlights the type of activism represented by broadly radical coalitions like the Gay Liberation Front, created after the 1969 Stonewall riots, and contrasts it with the narrowed focus of the current resistance. The author’s broad historical knowledge shows in his discussions of the movement’s ties to the Black Panthers and the Latino community as well as his profile of influential trans activist Sylvia Rivera. Duberman’s focus veers outward to illuminate the strengths and successes of the gay marriage agenda but also notes how it feels misguided in areas of class status and socio-economic advantage. The author uses experiences from his own “accomplished life” history as intimate examples while echoing the arguments of activist and journalist Michelangelo Signorile. However, the middle section of the book, which debates the origins of homosexuality, is awkwardly placed within the context of his primary discussion. With a mix of seasoned insight and palpable frustration, Duberman pleads his case for unity and togetherness within the LGBTQ community and across other societal and cultural groups, which must join forces for the common goal of equality and tolerance. The author’s exhilarating conclusion demonstrates a distinctive scholarship of gay liberation history and his familiarity with the “shriveled posture of the movement in its present guise.” Duberman challenges gay readers and their allies to become active within a complex caucus he feels has become unfocused and misled.
A relevant, fiery, and dizzying treatise certain to provoke debate and discussion.Pub Date: June 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-520-29886-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2018
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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