An impressive survey of American history and a useful guidebook for newcomers.
A debut author offers foreign-born residents an introduction to United States history in this nonfiction work.
With more than 50 million foreign-born residents, the United States remains a central destination for immigrants from around the globe. Among them are the author, a British lawyer who moved to the United States in 2009 and now lives in New York City. Speaking from his own experience, as well as conversations with fellow immigrants, the author notes that beyond the “culture shock” of living in a new country, many foreign-born residents are puzzled by the convoluted nature of American electoral politics, income taxes, housing patterns, and policies on reproductive rights and guns. “The roots of those problems,” the book notes, “can be traced back to the history of the United States.” Written explicitly for those born outside the country, Serocold offers readers a survey of the country’s past that he hopes will make them more confident by contextualizing current society. The book moves quickly but effectively, chronologically moving from Indigenous and colonial history through major sociopolitical events that shaped the area from the 1700s to the 2000s. At just over 500 pages, the book is significantly shorter than most textbooks that cover the same half-millennium and is written in an accessible style. Although the book is relatively concise, given the topic’s enormity, it does an admirable job of balancing America’s rhetorical commitment to democratic principles with its failures to live up to its ideals. Serocold, who’s written other resources for foreign-born residents, presents an engaging reference book that’s informed by a solid understanding of contemporary historiography and boasts a bibliography of more than 40 pages. Its robust appendices include important primary source documents, demographic information about American cities and states, an overview of federal holidays, and other “information about the practical and logistical aspects of living here.” Its emphasis on engagement is enhanced by its robust inclusion of maps, color photos, and other images.
An impressive survey of American history and a useful guidebook for newcomers.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9798891092044
Page Count: 542
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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