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
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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