Thoughtful and readable: a valuable contribution to Civil War–era history.
A fluent study of a transformative document in American history.
Guelzo (History/Eastern Univ.) views Abraham Lincoln as the last politician of the Enlightenment—that revolutionary school of thought that favored reason over religion, argued for the natural rights of humankind, and prized the little-remembered virtue of prudence, which, “unlike mere moderation, has a sense of purposeful motion and declines to be paralyzed by a preoccupation with process, even while it remains aware that there is no goal so easily attained or so fully attained that it rationalizes dispensing with process altogether.” So it was, Guelzo continues, when Lincoln declared that slaves in the rebellious territories of the US were henceforth free. Lincoln’s order, as many historians have observed, was written in uncharacteristically uninspired language; but, Guelzo notes, whereas the Gettysburg Address was plainly meant to thrill its audience, the Emancipation Proclamation “is a legal document, and legal documents cannot afford much in the way of flourishes. They have work to do.” True enough, and Guelzo does a fine job of linking the legal complexities hidden within the document to other contemporary legal issues, such as Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Controversies surrounding the Proclamation developed not just in the courtroom, but everywhere on the Northern street; though Lincoln, asked whether he were an abolitionist, had once admitted, “I am mighty near one,” most of his compatriots were more concerned with preserving the Union than with freeing slaves and indeed actively opposed the latter. Yet Lincoln braved the act, despite fears that the federal army might rise up against him in a coup and certainty that he would court plenty of enemies in the bargain. Of particular interest to legal-minded readers are the various drafts of the Proclamation that Guelzo includes as appendixes, which tell a story all their own.
Thoughtful and readable: a valuable contribution to Civil War–era history.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-2182-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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
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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