A welcome addition to Cherokee history.
A vigorous account of the forced removal of the Cherokee people from their southern homelands and the complex events leading to what the author does not hesitate to call a “death march.”
Charleston Post and Courier senior writer Hicks (When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the Morro Castle Disaster and Its Deadly Wake, 2006, etc.) shapes his story around tribal leader John Ross, popularly known as “the Cherokee Moses,” who led his people to Oklahoma and thereafter tried to forge of their reservation a true independent state. “He was the architect of the tribe’s greatest period of advancement; he made the Cherokees the most civilized of American Indian tribes,” writes the author. It is no small curiosity that Ross was as white as were the settlers who infringed on Cherokee territory and eventually displaced his people, whose number he joined by choice out on the frontier. In fact, he “barely had any Indian blood coursing through his veins. Yet, as Hicks, himself of Cherokee ancestry, capably argues, Ross was perhaps the greatest of all Cherokee leaders, even though in many ways he failed at his efforts. For one thing, he often outflanked but could never completely outrun Andrew Jackson, who was bent on making the hunting grounds of the Cumberland Plateau a white domain. Even before he became president, Jackson wanted to force the Indians of the southeast onto distant reservations to the west. For another, Ross’s efforts were often undone by tribal factionalism, betrayed even by his own brother. In his attempts to forge a true confederacy of Cherokee bands, he failed to reckon with private jealousies and with the demands of Indians who had already moved west before Ross and his people arrived. Hicks writes with appropriate indignation of their removal, calling it “little more than a human cattle drive.” He also takes a measured view of Ross’s opponents and allies alike, shedding new light on the career of other eminent figures such as the newspaperman and Confederate general Stand Watie.
A welcome addition to Cherokee history.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1963-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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