Good reading for Revolutionary War aficionados and maybe Banastre Tarleton fans as well.
A spirited tour of the landscapes of the American Revolution and the panoply of characters who figured in them.
Thompson opens with a set piece from the Battle of Cowpens. Fought on Jan. 17, 1781, “on the South Carolina frontier,” the battle promised to be a decisive victory for the British under the dreaded Banastre Tarleton. Instead, the American soldiers wheeled from retreat and destroyed 80% of Tarleton’s forces, sending the British reeling out of the South to Yorktown. “We almost never think about what would have happened if neither the rebels nor the British had won the war,” Thompson muses, conjuring up an uneasy status quo. While what made the difference were the late battles in the Revolution, early victories at Lexington and Bunker Hill played their parts, too. The author turns up a number of lesser-known incidents such as the “Powder Alarm,” which subverted post–Tea Party efforts on the part of Britain to clamp down on the Colonies; and Benedict Arnold’s ill-fated attempt to invade Quebec and turn its French inhabitants against the British—an attempt that surely figured in Arnold’s later turn away from the revolutionary cause. Thompson is knowledgeable on both the purely military aspects of the war and the alliances it engendered—for example, dividing Native peoples into pro- and anti-British or American factions that would later play out in the postwar history of westward expansion. There are some memorable scenes throughout, including the rather horrible image of the British at Yorktown slitting the throats of the horses they could no longer feed. One demerit is Thompson’s fondness for flippant asides—e.g., “If you’re feeling snarky, you could call Hamilton the 10-Minute War Hero”; “Among South Carolina’s partisans, the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, got his own Disney TV series; Andrew Pickens got the shaft, immortality-wise”—that add little to the narrative.
Good reading for Revolutionary War aficionados and maybe Banastre Tarleton fans as well.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781455565153
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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