Intriguing, methodical reconsiderations of some of history’s big questions.
Doti critically re-evaluates eight impactful episodes in history in this debut nonfiction book.
When the author, a retired chemist, decided to take on a five-year online graduate degree in history, it raised plenty of questions for him about how we approach the past. His book’s central tenet is that we must think critically. Doti’s argument is developed over eight essays organized under four themes: War and Peace, Nationalism and Imperialism, Democracy and Dictatorship, and Impactful Presidents and Controversy. Every essay pertains to a moment in the past that maintains a strong legacy in our present, from the commencement and close of the Cold War to the question of why Canada didn’t revolt with the United States in 1776. The author works through past scholarship for each essay; most begin with historical context for the question being asked, followed by a discussion of the research, some conclusions, and extensive bibliographies. Doti goes into great detail addressing various historians and their biases, which can make for fascinating reading. His writing is concise and sharp, engaging impressively with a vast array of historiography while considering the society we live in today. Arguably, the most thoughtful piece is his essay on the internment of the Japanese during World War II in the U.S., which widens to include bigger questions about racial animosity and its development within a society. The most thorough entry is the first essay, which aims to answer the question of whether or not the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 triggered the German extremism that resulted in the Second World War. “One must have the fortitude to challenge convention,” Doti writes; “I viewed this as a voyage of discovery into the past.” Readers joining this voyage will find much food for thought.
Intriguing, methodical reconsiderations of some of history’s big questions.Pub Date: April 24, 2024
ISBN: 9798891577091
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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