An absorbing narrative history of bloody struggles for dominance over the once- pristine, vast, and rich Ohio River Valley and its thousand-mile river. In the Ohio Valley, Indian tribes had long warred among themselves until the fierce Shawnees took control. They would later oppose the French and British, newcomers who also contested each other for the great prize. Eckert (A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh, 1992, etc.) employs his novelist's skills by expanding well-researched accounts of historical characters, mined from letters, diaries, and anecdotes, into numerous episodic tales of exciting and sometimes tragic adventures. By providing a long prologue with a full historical background and at times ``reconstituting'' credible dialogue among people in briefly reported events, Eckert heightens the drama. He finds heroes and villains among the hunters, trappers, surveyors, soldiers, and hard-working pioneer families; Indians who believed in the white man's treaty boundary lines until the lines were overrun by hordes of claim-staking people from the East, attracted by freedom and the promise of a better life; British aristocrats and bureaucrats trying to rule from safe havens like Williamsburg but eventually losing control of the restless flow of people moving west. Senseless murders of both Indian and white families by a few criminals on either side grew into wars without mercy—fueled by fear, hatred, and vengeance—that killed Indian, British-American, and French in wholesale numbers. Including sketches of such figures as the young George Washington, Daniel Boone, and George Rogers Clark, Eckert takes us through the French and Indian War and the American revolutionary period to 1799, when, at last, peace came to the Ohio River Valley. Eckert's scholarship and style breathe life into the records of a turbulent time in the history of colonial America. (maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-09448-3
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story of an Israeli Jew's experiences as a mole inside Germany's radical right. In September 1992 Svoray was an out-of-work fortune hunter and sometimes journalist searching Germany for diamonds stashed and then lost by an American GI 37 years before. By accident, this quixotic hunt led Svoray to an aging neo-Nazi who took a liking to him and became his conduit to the German far right: unrepentant Nazis from the Third Reich, murderous young skinheads, and modern right-wing ideologues and politicians. Svoray forgot the diamonds and became an investigator for the Los Angelesbased Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization established to combat anti- Semitism. Somehow, the neo-Nazis failed to penetrate Svoray's flimsy cover as a reporter for a nonexistent right-wing American publication and an advance man for a wealthy American looking to contribute to neo-Nazi movements. Further, Svoray managed to talk his way into right-wing strongholds in heavily accented English. Svoray and Taylor (A Necessary End, p. 131) tell the story of the Israeli's 18 months among the neo-Nazis. It is a fascinating, frightening, and revealing account, but one that is also badly flawed by the decision to write the book in the third person with Svoray as the hero/protagonist. The device turns In Hitler's Shadow into a tale of high adventure, complete with narrow escapes and moments of high danger, rather than investigative journalism. Svoray gathered important information about a movement that many critics charge has been paid insufficient attention by the German government, and the wide news coverage given Svoray's investigation may have contributed to Germany's recent crackdowns against neo- Nazis. (HBO will bradcast a tie-in movie in 1995.) An imperfect but riveting inside view of Germany's neo-Nazi movement and the dangers it presents. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-47284-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A fine summation of O’Connor’s long scholarly career that should be of wide interest to students of American history and...
A learned and literate history of the Athens of America.
O’Connor (Civil War Boston, 1997, etc.) offers a straightforward narrative of the city from its founding in the 17th century to the present. The organization is chronological, although O’Connor occasionally skips about to treat important themes such as religion and race and ethnicity. The somewhat old-fashioned year-by-year presentation is by no means stodgy, for the author believes that the history of Boston can be seen as one of conflict—whether between Separatists and Anglicans, Protestants and Irish Catholics, or blacks and whites. In every era, such conflicts have spilled out beyond Boston’s confines to influence the nation as a whole. “The basic tenets of Puritanism,” the author notes, “may have been confined to a relatively tiny segment of the New England seacoast during the first half of the 17th century, but they were to have an impact on American society and culture that would extend far beyond their immediate geographical surroundings.” O’Connor gives attention to topics that have received too little attention in standard histories, including the curious flowering of proto-hippie freethinking sects and cults in the 1820s and ’30s—a many-faceted movement, he notes, that coalesced in abolitionism, much to the chagrin of the city’s conservative ruling class. He downplays the role of “great men” (focusing instead on larger issues of race and class), and he notes that the city’s neighborhoods (and, thanks to busing, its schools) are now populated by a variety of minority groups who constitute a “minority majority” and reflect decades of “white flight” from the urban center.
A fine summation of O’Connor’s long scholarly career that should be of wide interest to students of American history and social issues.Pub Date: May 4, 2001
ISBN: 1-55553-474-0
Page Count: 291
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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