An astute account of plantation life before the Civil War.
A window into an evil institution.
In this gem of a book, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Taylor recounts in vivid detail the history of Tower Hill, a 2,000-acre slave plantation in Virginia. He draws on the correspondence of the Blow family, which owned the plantation, to unearth the story of the place. An illustrated book by William Nivison Blow Jr. also serves as a source. In 1809, young George Blow and his new wife moved to Tower Hill. He was, Taylor writes, “attentive to every detail and driven to maximum labor efficiency.” George’s father, Richard, eventually gave him full ownership. “George’s financial records depict a plantation that sustained a genteel way of life but at an immense labor cost” due to the large number of enslaved people. At one point, he owned 123 enslaved people. Taylor recounts the fascinating story of a slave “possessing charm and pathos” whose defiant exploits inspired other enslaved people, like the Blows’ “charismatic, resolute and strong” Simon, also known as General Sampson. His legend grew as he dodged evening slave patrols—“paddyrollers”—but he was eventually caught. The author also explores the considerable role of fugitive gangs, or “maroons,” who found refuge in the Great Dismal Swamp. He movingly describes the plight of enslaved children growing up with the master’s children. In the fall of 1831, Richard Blow’s writings record that significant information about preacher Nat Turner’s bloody revolt—just before a meteor that Taylor believes Turner saw in nearby Southhampton County—was inspired by Revelations. Turner was caught, tried and hanged, and “minimizing Turner’s revolt helped to preserve slavery, which increased the prospects of an eventual civil war within the Union.” Richard died in 1833, with his property going to George. “At some deep pyschological level,” writes Taylor, “George regretted his addiction to a slave system that was ruining him and the land. But for this he blamed enslaved people rather than himself and fellow masters.”
An astute account of plantation life before the Civil War.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781324117346
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
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 Yorkerstaff 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
A deeply learned dive into the frightening visions of technocrats past and present.
The noted historian and New Yorker staffer looks into a future ruled by machines.
Thirty-odd years ago, writes Lepore, liberal democracies of old were being transformed into both authoritarian or autocratic regimes and by “automatocracy, rule by automation, government by machine-driven computation, prediction, and persuasion.” In this pointed rejoinder to Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which foresaw a world in which humans were essentially superfluous, Lepore charts a long history that extends deep into the “machine age,” beginning in the 17th century, which saw “the artificial as existing not only outside the natural but above it, an improvement upon it.” In this conception, humans were fallible, while machines faithfully and unfailingly obeyed the rules set for them. A logical progression followed in the 1920s with the rise of the Technocracy movement, a variety of fascism widely accepted in the U.S. that held that far from being free and equal, humans should be governed by scientists and engineers who alone “have the intelligence and education to understand the industrial operations that lie at the heart of twentieth-century life.” It’s a short hop from there to the present, with tech billionaires pushing AI and, in the case of the influential “self-described ‘neo-monarchist’” Curtis Yarvin, a dictatorship aided by it. In all this, Lepore writes, it is not just the human animal that suffers but all animals and all habitats, which can only worsen with the incessant demands for energy, rare earths, and water that AI requires. And what “humans crave, in that artificial world, is nature,” a nature that is increasingly silenced. This undemocratic world, benefiting only the wealthy at the expense of all else, is a prison of screens and keyboards from which, she writes memorably, “What is required is to imagine an escape, and then to conduct it.”
A deeply learned dive into the frightening visions of technocrats past and present.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781324098423
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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