An exemplary graphic work built on a foundation of impressive scholarship.
A graphic narrative gives an unjustly neglected period in American history a labor-of-love illumination.
Mitchell’s rigorous academic research confirms that Oscar Dunn (1826-1871), the first Black lieutenant governor (and acting governor) in American history, is a worthy subject for such a biography, but for the author, this was clearly personal: “Dunn is my ancestor.” As he explains, what started him on the road toward his doctoral dissertation was the lack of knowledge about Dunn in his native state of Louisiana. In New Orleans, his great-grandmother had told him about the familial connection. “Some of these facts I learned that day sitting on my Grandmaw’s couch,” writes Mitchell, “and others I filled in over the years as I came to learn more about my trailblazing ancestor.” However, when he tried to tell his class about his illustrious ancestor, his teacher responded that there had never been a Black governor or lieutenant governor in Louisiana, and the whole class laughed at him. In this powerful work of historical excavation, the author sets the record straight, showing how Dunn navigated his way through the complicated politics and race relations of the state as well as a bitter rivalry with the corrupt governor (the two offices were elected separately). Dunn’s funeral procession drew a crowd of 20,000, “one of the largest funeral gatherings in the history of New Orleans.” In 1873, the new governor allocated funds for a monument, but it was never built, likely due to “the looming collapse of Reconstruction and increasing governmental chaos in Louisiana.” Throughout, Edwards’ vivid illustrations ably capture Dunn’s dignity and the era’s turmoil, providing narrative momentum to a story that features a few twists and turns. The incisive combination of text and illustrations creates an entirely satisfying historical story of both Dunn’s legacy and that of Reconstruction in general.
An exemplary graphic work built on a foundation of impressive scholarship.Pub Date: March 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-917860-83-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: The Historic New Orleans Collection
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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