A solid contribution to the literature of the New World slave trade.
A broad-based history of rebellion, escape, and agitation in the name of abolition in the slaveholding Americas.
Writes historian Gibson, resistance against slavery “was built into the system as it evolved, even after the slave trade spread up and down the [West African] coast.” Although a long-popular image is that of subdued villagers sadly but compliantly accepting their fate, Gibson notes that armed Africans set upon the caravels of the first enslavers with fleets of canoes, firmly believing, as one Portuguese captain was told, that “we Christians ate human flesh, and that we only bought negroes to eat them.” In a sense they were correct. In the European colonies of the Americas, the enslaved had almost no chance of ever returning home, as their cultures were consumed and their families broken apart. So it went for 400 years, from those first Portuguese slave ships all the way down to the final emancipation in late-19th-century Brazil. Gibson writes of the communities of the formerly enslaved, freed by manumission or escape, in the remote jungles and badlands of the colonies, noting in passing numerous ironies and curiosities—for one, that Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture owned or rented enslaved people himself, and for another, that Black enlistees in the British army, having run away from the Southern plantations to which they were bound, were among the troops that burned the White House in the War of 1812. Gibson mixes little-explored episodes with better-known stories such as Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy, swirling around “a simple rumor [that] could alert a militia and cause 35 necks to snap in a matter of weeks.” Throughout, as does Sudhir Hazareesingh in his contemporaneous and more fluently told study Daring To Be Free, Gibson insists on the primacy of the enslaved themselves as agents of their own liberation, “the true instigators of liberty.”
A solid contribution to the literature of the New World slave trade.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780802165497
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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