A fascinating collection of historical vignettes about the people who kept Delaware’s lighthouses running.
Tabler offers a history of Delaware’s lighthouses and their keepers.
The latest in the author’s series of books illuminating Delaware’s history focuses on the lighthouse keepers who warned sailors away from the Delaware coast for nearly two centuries, beginning in 1769 and extending through periods of war, revolution, and civil unrest. As in his earlier books, Tabler cites an enormous array of primary sources, from local newspaper accounts to genealogies, to flesh out in great detail the stories of the men and women who took on this job for around 170 years. Throughout, Tabler stresses that the stereotypical image of a lighthouse keeper held by most Americans, that of “the bearded hermit tending his lamp through howling storms, slowly losing his grip on sanity in the endless haze,” is completely wrong. The characters he describes in these pages are generally well-balanced family members and integral participants in their communities. The stories range from the 1760s (John and Elizabeth Dickerson kept the first beacons at Delaware’s Cape Henlopen) to the advent of lighthouse automation in the 1940s to the tales of men like William H. Johnson, the last keeper of the Christiana Lighthouse, whose duties by 1939 had been reduced to “little more than polishing lenses and keeping equipment in condition.” Each era and story is carefully grounded in footnoted sources, although none of those sources approach the comprehensive sweep of Tabler’s own accounts.
Far more so than in many of his earlier books, the author strikes a melancholy note in this work, frequently reminding readers that the story he’s telling comes to a sordid and ignominious ending. By his reckoning, Delaware has done a fairly shoddy job of honoring the history of these beacons that saved so many mariners’ lives over the years. Old lighthouses are neglected or torn down, and their accompanying residential structures are demolished in a casual erasure that Tabler views as an important loss: “As the towers fell and the houses were stripped for lumber, something more intangible was disappearing alongside them: the very idea of the lighthouse keeper as a meaningful figure in American life.” This somber note is effectively counterbalanced by the sheer abundance of fascinating historical detail the author provides, adroitly reminding readers that a good storyteller can make even obscure details fascinating. James H. Bell, for example, had been a transitional figure before his death at age 80 in 1906, the first of a new generation of lighthouse keepers who were far more prominent public figures. “His voice, captured in print and preserved,” Tabler writes, “bridges the quiet flame of the lantern with the wider world it illuminated.” The book’s many black-and-white photos inspire the same fascination as the stories they illustrate; Tabler brings the photos to vivid life, including copious details about the evolution of the types of equipment involved. Tabler is doing for Delaware’s regional history what Edward Rowe Snow did for Massachusetts-based lore a generation ago, retelling familiar stories and uncovering new ones to celebrate the ordinary people who have kept history moving forward. He keeps his narrative tempo smoothly balanced between broader history and personal detail, making this niche bit of history utterly gripping reading.
A fascinating collection of historical vignettes about the people who kept Delaware’s lighthouses running.Pub Date: June 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798992166767
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An inspiration for those fighting for democratic rights in the face of authoritarianism.
A spirited history of homegrown noncompliance.
There’s the history we know, and then, below that iceberg’s tip, all that we don’t. Stoermer, a public historian and teacher, does yeoman work in digging up stories that are far from the “safe, sanitized, often nationalistic version of the past.” Early on in his narrative, for example, come complex events out of early colonial New England. First is the revolt of Indigenous peoples led by the sachem Metacomet, a revolt that blossomed into “proportionally, the deadliest war in American history for the colonials,” one that textbooks would prefer to forget in favor of rosy stories of the first Thanksgiving. A decade later follows the not-unconnected Salem witchcraft trials, met by dissenters called the Unconfessed, who refused to accept the inquisitors’ assertions of heresy and sorcery, rebuking “a state that demanded its citizens validate its lies.” Given the flood of lies that inundates the country today, their resistance is a particularly valuable lesson. Almost unknown outside specialist circles is Stoermer’s account of the so-called Six, abolitionists who, prosperous and influential, “had accepted that tactical violence was necessary” in resisting slavery, financing, and otherwise supporting John Brown’s rebellion. Their story does not end happily; when the bullets flew, most of them withdrew. Throughout, Stoermer draws lessons to offer by way of a primer for today’s dissenters—for instance, “When systematic oppression operates at scale, resistance needs people who can build sophisticated infrastructure,” and, in doing so, who can contribute to a machinery of resistance to combat the machinery of the state. Usefully, he also reminds readers that even in defeat can come victory of sorts, as with the anti-Federalists who demanded that the Constitution contain amendments that “would later be used to challenge Jim Crow, expand civil rights, and protect individual liberty against state power.”
An inspiration for those fighting for democratic rights in the face of authoritarianism.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9781586424367
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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