Of value more for its small details than its larger narrative.
Survey of 15 episodes in electoral history, from ancient Rome to the near-present.
CNN anchor Bash and prolific writer Fisher join forces for a second time, this time to examine moments in political history that have continued influence today. One, for instance, was the election of Thomas Jefferson as president following a vitriolic campaign against incumbent John Adams and the ensuing peaceful transfer of power: “Later in American history this handover would become routine, normal, mundane, but at this moment there were serious concerns that it might not happen.” Jefferson’s unilateral acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase also “supported the concept that the president had implied powers…not specifically granted by the Constitution,” powers that presidents have run with ever since. The then-new experiment in republicanism, by the authors’ account, was founded in some measure on the Mayflower Compact, which enshrined the right to vote—if, that is, you were a white male over 21—and the concept of self-government. As Bash and Fisher note, democratic institutions had existed in America well before the arrival of the Mayflower (which, they note in passing, was bound for Virginia but blown off course to Massachusetts); they call the sophisticated structure of the Iroquois Confederacy “rudimentary.” The authors’ narrative is a bit of a hodgepodge. Their opening account of the life and death of Julius Caesar seems offhand, its legacy including enough pretended democracy that Romans could “at least feel they had a voice in their government”—a wan assessment. Still, they assemble some interesting tidbits, such as the fact that in the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, 81.2 percent of the electorate turned out and that Mikhail Gorbachev’s travels abroad prompted his later reforms of an ossified Soviet Union.
Of value more for its small details than its larger narrative.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9781335002174
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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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