Like a family album of lovingly collected snapshots, anecdotes, and clan lore, this study by Tedlock (Anthropology/SUNY at Buffalo) offers an affectionate and informative portrait of a contemporary Native American people, the Zuni of New Mexico. On her first visit, in the early 1970's, Tedlock, traveling with her new anthropologist-husband, ``fell in love with the beauty of the high desert and the native peoples of the American Southwest.'' This love affair soon turned into a scholarly study of the Zuni she met there, particularly the family of the patriarch Hapiya and his wife, Tola. Over the years, becoming an accepted member of Hapiya's family, Tedlock learned—as she listened to stories, attended festivals, and helped prepare special foods—how vital many of the old traditions still were. She observed such rituals as the sprinkling of cornmeal on animals and birds that had been killed, so that their journey to the village of the dead would be speedy; the propitiating of spirits with offerings of ears of corn; the butchering of deer; and the making of pottery with traditional tools and dyes. Tedlock made a special study of Zuni music—which, she says, is evolving new traditions, ``dancing the modern world into place, giving it meaning, order, perhaps even a sacred existence.'' But as exciting as the cultural discoveries have been, Tedlock also notes how, increasingly, the Zuni are living in a world in which much of the beauty of the old ways is challenged by the danger of the new. One of Hapiya's sons, a Vietnam vet and recovering alcoholic, has committed suicide; another family member has developed diabetes; and the viability of the old crafts is threatened by increasing costs and unscrupulous middlemen. Tedlock's personal but never sentimental approach vividly conveys the vitality and continuing role of Zuni traditions in the Southwest. A worthy if occasionally uneven contribution, then, to Native American studies. (Illustrations—b&w—throughout.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-84448-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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