A scorcher that exposes shameful attitudes, personalities, and events that might seem eerily familiar.
A pointed account of a fear-mongering demagogue’s quick rise and meteoric fall.
As in this trio’s previous collaboration, Bringing Down a President: The Watergate Scandal (2019), this history is written as a playscript, with a cast of dozens of political figures, journalists and other witnesses, and victims and their descendants offering snippets of verbatim testimony with commentary by the omniscient narrator, “Fly on the Wall.” Setting them against a backdrop of events of the time, Balis and Levy clearly establish how contemptible the headline-seeking, accusation-flinging Joseph McCarthy (“A pimple on [the] path of progress,” as President Eisenhower once put it), and Roy Cohn, his bulldog lawyer, were. The piecemeal narratives also create clear pictures of the course of the Red Scare (and the contemporaneous anti-gay Lavender Scare) and the ugly efforts, led by FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, to insinuate connections between communism and the nascent Civil Rights Movement. In the end, for all the whipped-up fear and grandstanding, as one of Hoover’s aides at last admitted, “We didn’t have enough evidence to show that there was a single communist in the State Department.” The storytelling approach serves as a reminder that history happens to real people in real time. “We want to emphasize,” the authors conclude, “that historical witch hunts affect regular people like the ones you know.” Final art not seen.
A scorcher that exposes shameful attitudes, personalities, and events that might seem eerily familiar. (author’s note, timeline, note on sources, source notes, further reading, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 11-15)Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781250246813
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Intrepid explorer Lourie tackles the “Father of Waters,” the Mighty Mississippi, traveling by canoe, bicycle, foot, and car, 2,340 miles from the headwaters of the great river at the Canadian border to the river’s end in the Gulf of Mexico. As with his other “river titles” (Rio Grande, 1999, etc.), he intertwines history, quotes, and period photographs, interviews with people living on and around the river, personal observations, and contemporary photographs of his journey. He touches on the Native Americans—who still harvest wild rice on the Mississippi, and named the river—loggers, steamboats, Civil War battles, and sunken treasure. He stops to talk with a contemporary barge pilot, who tows jumbo-sized tank barges, or 30 barges carrying 45,000 tons of goods up and down and comments: “You think ‘river river river’ night and day for weeks on end.” Lourie describes the working waterway of locks and barges, oil refineries and diesel engines, and the more tranquil areas with heron and alligators, and cypress swamps. A personal travelogue, historical geography, and welcome introduction to the majestic river, past and present. (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-756-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If Freedman wrote the history textbooks, we would have many more historians. Beginning with an engrossing description of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, he brings the reader the lives of the American colonists and the events leading up to the break with England. The narrative approach to history reads like a good story, yet Freedman tucks in the data that give depth to it. The inclusion of all the people who lived during those times and the roles they played, whether small or large are acknowledged with dignity. The story moves backwards from the Boston Tea Party to the beginning of the European settlement of what they called the New World, and then proceeds chronologically to the signing of the Declaration. “Your Rights and Mine” traces the influence of the document from its inception to the present ending with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The full text of the Declaration and a reproduction of the original are included. A chronology of events and an index are helpful to the young researcher. Another interesting feature is “Visiting the Declaration of Independence.” It contains a short review of what happened to the document in the years after it was written, a useful Web site, and a description of how it is displayed and protected today at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. Illustrations from the period add interest and detail. An excellent addition to the American history collection and an engrossing read. (Nonfiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8234-1448-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
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