Political scientist Barber (Rutgers; An Aristocracy of Everyone, 1992, etc.) grandly divides the planet into no more and no less than two camps to explain the present universal, sorry mess. The only hope, he says, is democracy, and between the equally malign forces of Jihad and McWorld, the odds for it aren't too good. According to the professor's realpolitik, McWorld means not merely worldwide fast food but all capitalist buccaneering, global marketeering, cyberspace, megamergers, and international corporate incest aimed at nothing but profit. The Japanese motor in your Swiss camera might be made in China and sold by a British ad agency. Borders mean nothing in McWorld; the sun never sets on its flag. Movies, TV, and theme parks like EuroDisney and the local mall are all. Fighting for hegemony, probably without ultimate success according to Barber, is international Jihad. By Jihad he means not merely Hamas or Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Add neo-Nazis, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, unregulated militia members, and the balkanization of the Balkans. Fundamentalism and nationalism, often drawing sustenanance from imaginary history, are in impassioned battle with infotainment and merchandising. The struggle is not impeded by any government or international agreement. Earth looks like a political Rubik's cube. Jihad receives bomb-making instructions on the Internet. McWorld sells designer jeans to Palestinian and Israeli alike. The paradox hardly enhances the freedom of the individual, and democracy suffers under either banner. And yet, declares Barber, democracy is our only viable choice. The bifurcation of the global village may seem simplistic, but assuredly the dialectic is not. The author's range is, perforce, universal. Certainly he is no optimistic Toffler, Fukuyama, or Pangloss. His concern for the public weal is patent; his impassioned argument is provocative and portentous. This is a generally erudite, copiously detailed synthesis, a polemic long on problems and short on solutions. It's not fast-food reading; it's serious food for thought.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-2350-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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
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
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