A captivating, shady story about massive, brazen corruption hiding in plain sight.
The history of a small town in Arkansas that once rivaled Las Vegas in gambling, booze, and prostitution.
For most Americans, Hot Springs, Arkansas, doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but folks who lived in the state from the 1930s to the ’60s knew the place as “the most sinful little city in the world.” In his first book, Hill, a Brooklyn-based journalist from Hot Springs, tells a juicy tale of how such a place was born and stayed in business for so long as the “sin city of the Bible Belt.” Due to the Vapors, therapeutic, thermal springs offering relief to those in pain, the area “was the first park to be managed by the federal government.” The author offers up a huge cast of colorful, mostly sleazy characters, but he focuses on three key players: Hazel Hill, the author’s grandmother; gangster Dane Harris, boss gambler and the “most powerful man in Hot Springs”; and Owney “The Killer” Madden, who was sent to the town in 1931 by Meyer Lansky to be the “mob’s ambassador.” Weaving their stories in and out, from 1931 to 1968, Hill unfolds an engrossing history of corruption at the highest levels. During World War II, Hot Springs and its excellent hospital became a refuge for soldiers seeking much-needed R&R, enjoying the illegal booze, and gambling. Madden consolidated power, teaming up with Harris. Struggling to raise her family of three sons, including Jimmy, the author’s father, Hazel moved from Ohio back to Hot Springs in 1951 and got a job as a barmaid and, later, a “shill player” at a casino, gambling with the house’s money. In highly detailed, novelistic prose, Hill chronicles the rise of the power brokers and their ballot-stuffing control of local and state elections. In 1965, J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Robert Kennedy finally shut it all down.
A captivating, shady story about massive, brazen corruption hiding in plain sight. (8 pages of b/w illustrations)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-08611-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.
An exuberant celebration of more than 100 women who shaped the myths and realities of New York City.
In her debut book, journalist Scelfo, who has written for the New York Times and Newsweek, aims to counter histories of New York that focus only on “male political leaders and male activists and male cultural tastemakers.” As the author discovered and shows, the contributions of women have been deeply significant, and she has chosen a copious roster of personalities, gathered under three dozen rubrics, such as “The Caretakers” (pioneering physicians Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, who enacted revolutionary hygienic measures in early-20th-century tenements); “The Loudmouths” (Joan Rivers and Better Midler); and “Wall Street” (brokerage firm founder Victoria Woodhull and miserly investor Hetty Green). With a plethora of women to choose from, Scelfo aimed for representation from musical theater, law enforcement, education, social justice movements, and various professions and organizations. Some of the women are familiar (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her preservation work; Brooke Astor for her philanthropy), some iconic (Emma Lazarus, in a category of her own as “The Beacon”), and some little-known (artist Hildreth Meière, whose art deco designs can be seen on the south facade of Radio City Music Hall). One odd category is “The Crooks,” which includes several forgettable women who contributed to the city’s “cons and crimes.” The author’s brief, breezy bios reveal quirky facts about each woman, a form better suited to “The In-Crowd” (restaurateur Elaine Kaufman, hardly a crowd), entertainers (Betty Comden, Ethel Waters), and “The Wisecrackers” (Nora Ephron, Tina Fey) than to Susan Sontag, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion. Nevertheless, the book is lively and fun, with something, no doubt, to pique anyone’s interest. Heald’s blithe illustrations add to the lighthearted mood.
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58005-653-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
A rich, readable historical study of Lincoln’s thinking, which remains timely.
A solid exploration of Lincoln’s clear intention to create a firm peace after the Civil War.
By April 4, 1865, as the president toured the fallen Confederate capital of Richmond, after four years of political, military, and personal crisis, he had a vision for a lasting, nonpunitive peace. “In this twilight between war and peace, the outcome was certain, but the terms were not yet determined,” writes CNN anchor and senior political analyst Avlon. “Lincoln repeated his three ‘indispensable conditions’ for peace: no ceasefire before surrender, the restoration of the Union, and the end of slavery for all time. Everything else was negotiable.” Having just been confidently reelected, Lincoln knew his mission was to turn quickly from war to peace and secure the reattachment of the former Rebel states to the newly affirmed union. The author traces the evolution of Lincoln’s pioneering vision of reconciliation and reconstruction. “Working without a historic parallel to guide him,” writes Avlon, “Lincoln established a new model of leadership.” First and foremost, he insisted on unconditional surrender, followed by the establishment of the rule of law. He sought to rededicate the South to representative democracy and then move the country’s focus to the great Western expanse. The author points out how Ulysses S. Grant’s famously generous terms of surrender to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox were a direct expression of Lincoln’s wishes. Avlon also shows how the president, who was honest, pious, humble, and fond of speaking in parables, modeled his concept of peace on the golden rule. His focus sharpened in the last six weeks of his life, a period that the author examines in fascinating detail. Tough-minded but tender-hearted, Lincoln created a blueprint that has been used in a variety of scenarios since, from the Marshall Plan to the political reconciliation effected in South Africa after the defeat of apartheid.
A rich, readable historical study of Lincoln’s thinking, which remains timely.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982108-12-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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