by Bernard A. Weisberger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2000
A must-read for armchair historians and budding scholars; for experts, an excursion on well-trodden ground.
A vivid political history of the earliest and most unstable years of the American republic.
Focusing almost exclusively on the Founding Fathers, American Heritage columnist Weisberger examines the political infighting surrounding the first presidential elections. Fortunately, the narrative is charming enough to make anyone familiar with this period want to read on, thanks to the author’s happy talent of sketching each larger-than-life character in the most humane lines. Washington is initially high-minded and noble, but as his administration progresses he grows partisan and reactionary. Adams is the reverse: impatient and reactionary during his first years as president, he eventually grows aloof and distant as he suffers in the storm of partisanship he helped create. Those disgusted with the role that money, the press, and political parties play in contemporary US politics will be sorry to find that yesterday wasn’t much better. Brilliant but flaky Jefferson, as well as brilliant and scheming Hamilton, were the first to exploit political parties—the Republicans and Federalists. Both also directly controlled newspapers, political appointments, and various financial interests and old-boy networks to achieve their ends. And the parallels don’t end there: Hamilton was involved in a sex scandal and gave individuals lucrative insider information to keep the affair under wraps. Foreign policy emergencies also contribute to the intrigue: the “quasi-war” with France was instrumental in fomenting partisanship, and the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed during the war, gave Republicans much-needed ammunition in their campaign against Adams. Weisberger’s tone grows wistful and nostalgic as the narrative ends, but he consistently masters his material, especially when he discusses censorship and the press, leading readers to trust his judgment. He views the growth of parties as a natural by-product of democracy, implying that not much could have been accomplished otherwise. While this conclusion isn’t exactly new, readers still boning up on the subject will find a comprehensive introduction here.
A must-read for armchair historians and budding scholars; for experts, an excursion on well-trodden ground.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-380-97763-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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