An illuminating book of American history in which the author discloses the true heroes—the ordinary citizens who defeated...
Slack (Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America’s First Female Tycoon, 2004, etc.) engagingly reveals how the Federalist attack on the First Amendment almost brought down the Republic.
The Sedition Act drama that played out from 1798 to 1801 was a political move much more than any protection of the public. The nascent nation was just coming into its own and creating a two-party system—at that time, the Federalists and Republicans. After the Alien Acts, Congress passed the Sedition Act due to the fear of war with the French. In reality, it was nothing more than a justification for oppression of the opposition. The author’s explanation of the First Amendment is clear and precise and will give readers pause as to how that bill could ever have been considered. He shows that the Bill of Rights is not the source of our freedoms but rather a mechanism of protection, disallowing Congress from enacting bills that would infringe on them. Furthermore, John Adams was not a charismatic, unifying force like George Washington; on the contrary, he was thin-skinned, petty and snobbish. His Federalist beliefs held that government needed to reinstate the people’s sense of duty to be ruled by their betters. Adams’ signing of the Sedition Act was nothing more than “a stark, personal betrayal of his deepest held personal beliefs.” Unfortunately, most of those convicted of sedition had criticized Adams. Curiously, the law came with an expiration date, when Congress and the president’s terms would expire. Political? Most assuredly. It omitted protection of Vice President Thomas Jefferson, a Republican.
An illuminating book of American history in which the author discloses the true heroes—the ordinary citizens who defeated these acts—while showing just how the concept of “government of the people” works.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123428
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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
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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