Lightweight but informative, like a classy commemorative.
The author of A History of Britain in Thirty-Six Postage Stamps (2013) returns with a similar volume for the United States.
Surprise: One of the stamps is not the 1918 “Inverted Jenny” (the upside-down airplane)—and there are a few other surprises, as well. West begins with the Stamp Act of 1765 and marches steadily forward, offering a swift history of the United States with key events illustrated by (or occasioned by) a postage stamp from the era. We learn about the gradual improvements brought about by developments in printing, the preponderance of white men pictured (George Washington has appeared on more than 130), the stamps produced by the Confederacy during the Civil War, the arrival of parcel post, the emergence of air mail (Charles Lindbergh was a postal pilot until immortality beckoned), the story of Georg Olden (the first African-American to design a postage stamp) and all sorts of other philatelic goodies. Unsurprisingly, much of the focus—early in the history—is on military events and the doings of U.S. presidents. Gradually, however, West broadens his scope, just as the Postal Service did in its commemoratives. Readers will be able to detect his determination to appear disinterested in American politics, evident in his praise and criticism of lightning-rod figures like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. The author has a soft spot for Andrew Carnegie, calling him “a man of principle,” a characterization that will set spinning in their graves a legion of his competitors. West does not say a lot about the literary figures on stamps—though he does mention The Grapes of Wrath, Sidney Lanier and a few others. He seems (correctly?) to suspect that readers would rather hear about Davy Crockett, Billy the Kid, Louis Armstrong, the Enola Gay and the evolution of the computer.
Lightweight but informative, like a classy commemorative.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-04368-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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 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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
