A lively history of early New York through one woman’s horrendous ordeal.
The sad, sordid story of the first American woman to face trial for capital murder.
Mary Houseman Bodine (c. 1810-1892) was excoriated as “a fallen woman” and murderer before she was even tried in court for the deaths of her sister-in-law and infant niece in 1843. Having moved back to her father’s house on Staten Island, after leaving her abusive husband and taking her two children with her, Bodine often stayed over at her brother’s cottage, which was adjacent to her father’s. On the night of the crime, with only a shaky alibi when the house next door burned down, and perhaps the last to have seen her sister-in-law alive, Bodine was quickly suspected of the murders and also robbery, compounded by her disappearing into Manhattan and apparently pawning items at shops around town. Hortis, a constitutional lawyer, crime historian, and author of The Mob and the City, looks at how the rivaling tabloids and their owners—including James Gordon Bennett of the Herald and Moses Yale Beach of the Sun—tried to outdo each other in sensational coverage of Bodine’s story, relying on hearsay and fabrication to sell more papers. The author capably describes the melee of commerce and scandal that bristled in early New York City. The details that emerged—of Bodine’s romance with an apothecary in Manhattan, the boss of her teenaged apprentice son, and her advanced pregnancy—added to the prurient interest at the time, as did articles by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman and a witchlike wax figure in P.T. Barnum’s museum. Hortis has combed the archives for material related to Bodine’s three explosive trials, and the book ultimately ends in her acquittal in a Newburgh, New York, court in 1846; he makes palpable the shameful character assassination and “slut-shaming” that Bodine endured.
A lively history of early New York through one woman’s horrendous ordeal.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781639363919
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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