A capacious, prodigiously researched biography from a top-shelf historian.
A revisionist portrait of a maligned monarch.
English historian and biographer Roberts, winner of the Wolfson History Prize and many other honors, draws on abundant archival sources to create a deeply textured portrait of George III (1738-1820), whom he calls “the most unfairly traduced sovereign in the long history of the British monarchy.” Countering the characterizations of George as pompous and cruel, promulgated in such plays as Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III and Hamilton, Roberts argues that the king was an intelligent, astute leader, dedicated to upholding the British Constitution. In addition to his passion for the arts and sciences; he was “well-meaning, hard-working, decent, dutiful, moral, cultured and kind.” A shy child, he was by no means backward, although his own mother thought he “was not quick.” Nevertheless, Roberts found that “his exercise books in the Royal Archives show that George was perfectly competent at reading and writing English by the age of nine.” By 15, he could translate classical texts, including philosophy. His father died when he was 12, and his grandfather was cruel and abusive, leading young George to see as his “surrogate father” John Stuart, a handsome, charming man 25 years older, who “introduced George to many of the artistic and intellectual passions of his life, and to the people who stimulated them.” Stuart long served as George’s confidant, adviser, and, briefly, prime minister. Roberts capably traces the complicated machinations that led to George’s selection of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz as his wife; the roiling politics of 18th-century England; the gossip and power play that threatened his authority; the American colonists’ inevitable break from British rule (nothing to do with taxes, Roberts argues); and five episodes of manic-depressive psychosis—not, as many historians have believed, porphyria. Vividly detailed, the author’s life of George is comfortably situated in the context of British, European, and Colonial history.
A capacious, prodigiously researched biography from a top-shelf historian.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984879-26-4
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
A strong voice for social justice emerges in an engaging memoir.
An African American attorney and politician reflects on the forces that shaped him.
In a candid and affecting memoir, CNN political analyst Sellers, the youngest member of the South Carolina Legislature when he was elected in 2006, chronicles his evolution as a political activist. Sellers grew up in the rural town of Denmark, South Carolina, where his family moved in 1990. Sellers loved being “country,” where he could ride his bike on back roads, fish in the ponds, and play in cotton fields. Even in what he describes as a bucolic setting, the civil rights movement pervaded the family’s life: Both parents were activists; Sellers was “the campaign baby” during Jesse Jackson’s second run for president in 1988; and when the phone rang, the caller might well be “Uncle” Julian Bond or “Aunt” Kathleen Cleaver. The author counts as decisive his education at historically black Morehouse College, where he was “bit by the political bug,” winning his first campaign to become junior class president. Later, he mounted a successful run for election to the state legislature and, in 2014, resigned that seat to run for lieutenant governor. Although his Republican opponent won that race, Sellers garnered a respectable 41% of the vote. “I always tell people that we chipped away at the glass,” he writes. Sellers admits disappointment with the black church for becoming “passive and insular at best at a time when it needs to be younger and more progressive.” He is forthright, as well, about suffering from anxiety, which he attributes to the fear, rage, and anger that result from continued racial oppression. Hostilities, such as the hatred that led to the Mother Emanuel AME church tragedy in Charleston, are endemic. Donald Trump’s election, Sellers asserts, was caused not by economic but cultural fear “that somehow, black and brown people were going to replace whites.”
A strong voice for social justice emerges in an engaging memoir.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-291745-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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A well-rendered cowboy tale that fleshes out a larger history of the Old West.
The life of a Texas cowboy who ranged the wild frontier paints a broader picture of bygone times in the American West.
Charlie Siringo (1855-1928) herded cattle and drove livestock to slaughter, learning his cowboy skills from the age of 12. In this lively and detailed account, Ward, author of The Lost Detective and Dark Harbor, creates “a portrait of the American West through which he traveled as such a compelling witness—from the birth of the cattle trail and railroad cow town to the violence of the mining wars and the Wild Bunch’s long last ride.” Siringo captured the era in what is considered to be the first cowboy autobiography, A Texas Cowboy; or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (1885), "a work of celebration and mourning for the raucous cowboy life that was ending." Ward devotes just as many chapters to Siringo's later career as a detective, going undercover "to track, befriend and betray" criminals ranging from anarchist bombers to Butch Cassidy. The author also recounts the tangled publishing history of Siringo's memoir A Cowboy Detective (1912), its editions repeatedly quashed due to nondisclosure agreements with the agency that employed him. Ward's consideration of his subject as a working cowboy quickly broadens into that of Siringo as a literary figure whose many books included a life of Billy the Kid, whom he knew well. Siringo was also well appreciated as a "font of authenticity" on cowboy lore during his work as a consultant on Western films in Hollywood in his later years. Illustrations, vintage photos, and maps throughout the text add atmosphere and context to this stirring, multivaried life. If Ward doesn't quite prove that Siringo helped create the foundations of the literature of the American West, he shows that this original cowboy certainly lived out the most fertile period of that time and place.
A well-rendered cowboy tale that fleshes out a larger history of the Old West.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802162083
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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