Not the last, but for now the best, word on a subject basic to American and Caribbean history. (41 b&w illustrations,...
An important scholarly study of how the major colonies of the British West Indies, by not seeking independence alongside the mainland colonies in 1776, contributed to the outcome of the American Revolution.
We tend to forget that 13 British colonies in the Western Hemisphere (those in the Caribbean) did not join the 13 others (those on the continent to the north) in the great 18th-century war for independence from Great Britain. Why? Most historians have cited the islands' vulnerability to British naval attack if they rebelled, their dependence on British markets for their sugar crops, and planters' fear of slave insurrections. O'Shaughnessy (Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh) greatly amplifies these reasons in this comprehensive survey of a question whose answer is necessary for a full understanding of the success of the American revolutionary war. This is the first effort to bring together in a single volume what we know so far about the islands' resistance to rebellion, how their defense by the British siphoned off resources from fighting on the mainland, and how the Revolution's outcome forever affected the islands' history. O'Shaughnessy correctly makes much of the cultural affinities and political ties between the islands and their mother country—ties much stronger than those of most North American colonies. But he doesn't neglect economic or military factors and deftly outlines the divisions within and between the islands about the course to take. Those who might wish for what might have been—independent island nations—will be sobered by the weight of geography, demographics, and social norms that determined what turned out to be a history vastly different from our own, yet profoundly affecting it by helping make American independence possible.
Not the last, but for now the best, word on a subject basic to American and Caribbean history. (41 b&w illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: June 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-8122-3558-4
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Univ. of Pennsylvania
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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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