Could be better focused, but the author clearly knows his stuff, and Civil War buffs will have a ball.
Close-up examination of eight battles, often revising previous assessments.
For each of the battles he treats, military historian Nosworthy (The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War, 2003, etc.) focuses on a single small unit. At Gettysburg, he looks at the relatively neglected engagement between Stuart and Custer’s forces on the East Cavalry Field, while at Fredericksburg he puts the emphasis on the Washington Artillery’s repulse of several Union assaults on Marye’s Heights. He cites European tactical manuals and their American adaptations on both sides of the conflict to show the military doctrine in place at the time and the effects of its application on battles. For example, he argues that Burnside’s difficulties at First Bull Run arose partly from asking unseasoned recruits to perform maneuvers that had worked for veteran armies during the 18th century. Nosworthy also corrects misunderstandings about the capabilities of the weapons used. The theoretical ranges of standard-issue firearms were based on noncombat conditions and assumed constant practice; actual results on the battlefield are reflected in an 1863 estimate by Union military authorities that during the Battle of Murfreesboro, one in 145 shots fired by infantry resulted in an enemy casualty. The author refutes the accepted account of the battle of Arkansas Posts, which credits the Union victory to river gunboats. Gunboat fire was inherently inaccurate, he points out; it was land-based rifled Parrott cannons that destroyed the Confederate artillery and prompted surrender. Elementary tactical lapses can lead to the speedy collapse of an apparently superior position, he reminds us, as when the commander at Missionary Ridge placed troops where they had no retreat in the event of failure. Nosworthy is constantly on the lookout for bias in battle reports: The standard account of how North Carolina cavalryman Col. Alexander C. Haskell dealt Grant’s army a setback at Darbytown Road, for example, was written by the colonel’s brother-in-law, otherwise a reliable historian.
Could be better focused, but the author clearly knows his stuff, and Civil War buffs will have a ball.Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7867-1747-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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