The edifying, colorful adventures of headhunters captured in America by a sideshow rascal.
This bright story of a shameless huckster evokes a unique bit of Americana at the turn of the 20th century, when the nation dabbled in empire-building and the display of human beings as objects of curiosity was a staple of show business.
Not long after the United States took control of the Philippines, 50 members of the Igorrote tribe, indigenous to the mountains of Luzon, agreed to travel to America for a year with Dr. Truman Hunt to display salient features of their culture. The happy tribespeople’s native costume was smaller than a stripper’s final revelation, and they excelled in spear chucking and tobacco smoking. On occasion, too, they were headhunters and ready to feast on dogs. Fatherly Dr. Hunt booked his troupe into venues like Luna Park in Coney Island, where they continuously performed in G-strings for gawkers. They ate boiled mongrel until they were quite fed up with their canine diet. Managed by the ever demanding, ever drinking Hunt, the show was a great hit, playing in many cities across the continent. Of course, it was more fakery than ethnography. Journalist Prentice artfully reveals the growing mendacity of the promoter/doctor. The Igorrotes were degraded, robbed of their earnings and held against their will, unable to return home. Throughout their ordeal, the purported savages proved considerably more dignified and civilized than the many showmen charged with their care. In this nicely paced popular history, the author ably develops the diverse ancillary characters, such as the wives of bigamist Hunt, the promoters and the shady lawyers. Eventually, the government pursued the evasive Hunt. The tale ends, improbably, with strange lawsuits. Prentice presents the story of the innocent tribe with sympathy; in her telling, the Igorrotes charm and entertain us once again after more than a century.
The edifying, colorful adventures of headhunters captured in America by a sideshow rascal.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0544262287
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Amazon/New Harvest
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
An intelligent and often witty collection of essays for pre-Baby Boomers and Boomers alike. Clausen (English/Penn State; The Moral Imagination, not reviewed) offers nine essays reflecting on the experiences of the '60s generation. In so doing, he attempts to explode some of the most cherished myths about that turbulent decade and the people it spawned. While members of his generation may have nothing more in common than do those of any other age cluster, Clausen notes that it was nevertheless shaped by political, economic, and historical forces very different from those at work when his father came of age. The title piece is a reflection on what President Kennedy meant to him and his peers. Clausen accurately depicts the ambiguity of JFK's record on issues such as Vietnam, Berlin, and civil rights, but he points out that for those who grew up in the early '60s, the idealistic promises of Camelot still grip the imagination. In ``A Decent Impersonality,'' he ruminates on the increase of informality and the use of first names for even casual acquaintances, arguing that it breeds disrespect for the person and the law. ``Reading the Supermarket Tabloids'' is a dead-on account of this growing phenomenon. In ``Dr. Smiles and Mrs. Beeton,'' Clausen reflects on manners, Victorian England, and the rise of the middle class. ``Jack-in-the-Pulpit'' considers changing tastes in vacation spots and activities. All the pieces are broadly autobiographical—some, such as ``Survivors,'' directly, and others only allusively. ``Grandfathers'' and ``Dialogues with the Dead'' are among the many dealing with changing, but still important, notions of family. Clausen's glib style may not be for everyone, and he often comes off, probably unintentionally, as a tad reactionary. But there's enough here to appeal to readers from a broad spectrum.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1994
ISBN: 0-87745-472-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
In a perceptive look at the nation's most distinctive region, Grantham (History/Vanderbilt Univ.) examines the relationship between the South and the rest of the United States during the 20th century. He delineates this relationship in terms of several major themes, exploring the modern history of sectional conflict, the many areas of compromise among the regions, cultural convergence between the South and other areas of the country (with the consequent blurring of southern culture's special features), and the persistence, nonetheless, of southern distinctiveness in the nation's consciousness. Conflict was reflected both in the mutually unflattering perceptions and attitudes of Southerners and Northerners and in substantive differences between the regions on party alignment, civil rights, Prohibition, and federal regulation of utilities, tariffs, and banks. Although it often disagreed with the Northeast, Midwest, and West on these and other issues, the South in Grantham's view pervasively influenced American politics and society as a whole in many ways. Prior to WW II and the civil rights movement, the Democratic party was controlled by its southern wing, and southern Democrats, from Richard B. Russell to Huey Long, were a powerful force in Congress, one with which successive presidents had to reckon. In more recent years conservative southern factions have demonstrated similar influence in the Republican party. With what Grantham calls the ``Second Reconstruction'' of the 1960s and with the emergence of the Sunbelt South, the region has lost its traditional hallmark of backwardness, developing an increasingly urbanized economy and becoming in many ways more prosperous and progressive than the decaying, racially polarized North. Nonetheless, Grantham argues, the South retains some of its special cultural features, including a fervent religiosity, a ``subculture of violence,'' and a profusion of literary talent, from Barry Hannah to Bobbie Ann Mason. A rich, sympathetic, warts-and-all portrait of the South.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-016773-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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