A hard-charging resurrection of Black lives in Jim Crow America.
Revisiting a vital resistance and survival tool for Black Americans.
In 2015, broadcaster Hall first learned about The Negro Motorist Green Book, published by Victor and Alma Green from 1936 to 1967. Each year, the Greens offered guidance to Black Americans, many of whom were traveling from the North, where they had migrated, to their families in the South. In a nation rife with bigotry and racial violence, the guide told travelers about restaurants, hotels, medical facilities, and even gas stations that would welcome their business. Although car travel offered some measure of safety for Blacks—they could avoid being threatened, demeaned, or attacked on buses and trains—still, they knew “that simply driving—being behind the wheel of a car—was viewed in many parts of the United States as an affront to social restrictions based on white supremacy.” The Green Book, then, was a crucial resource for Black Americans traveling around the country. For Hall, the books served as an invitation into history, and they became the basis for two road trips: in 2016, to research the BBC documentary The Green Book, and in 2019, accompanied by his friend and co-producer Janée Woods Weber, for his own 10-episode podcast. Hall’s many interviewees bear witness to confusing interactions, frightening encounters, and their elders’ strict admonitions. Often, Blacks would not risk stopping in towns along the way; when they did, parents made sure their children were aware of “the unwritten, often capricious, area-specific restrictions in the southern states and the possibly life-threatening reactions to violating them.” Word of mouth spread information about sundown towns, where Blacks could be arrested or killed if they were on the streets after sundown. Sundown towns, Hall discovered, were not mentioned in the Green Book; neither did the words racism or Jim Crow appear. Nonetheless, the Greens’ “diplomatic language” conveyed their points clearly, and Hall relates them clearly to current-day readers.
A hard-charging resurrection of Black lives in Jim Crow America.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063271968
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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 short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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