Captures the stolid, charmingly evolving open spirit of the British people—though not likely to appeal to a broad American...
The next chapter—following Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (2008)—in a staggeringly thorough, ongoing study of postwar Britain.
For most American readers, who don’t know Harringay from Herfordshire or Atlee from Eden, this dense sociological study of British society in the 1950s may strike far from the radar. British historian Kynaston depicts lingering postwar rationing, economical buying habits, jobs and educational opportunities, favorite radio shows and football teams, pub-crawling proclivities, birth-control methods, housing inclinations and voting records, among numberless other subjects. The author has a felicitous, fluid writing style, and he nicely dilutes the heavy factual information with the voices of the people, recorded here in diaries, newspaper accounts, etc. From being badly battered by the war to moving into “some sort of peacetime normality” and even gingerly embracing the modern era, the exhausted yet still upbeat British people had voted the Labour party narrowly out of office in 1951 and brought Churchill back in. Underscoring the general mood, one elderly voter is quoted as saying, “All I want is to see England on her feet again.” The coronation of Elizabeth in 1953 proved the high mark of the decade, while her sister Margaret’s affair with a married officer caused the decade’s major scandal. In a country where there was a general aversion to the “common,” the working class began to find its voice, aided by depictions on the new medium of television. Kynaston gets at the strong sense of community that was developing among the people, and he covers most of the cultural milestones, including the publication of Dylan Thomas and Kingsley Amis, the hanging of Ruth Ellis, the emergence of the Teddy Boys and the debates over grammar-school reform and modern architecture.
Captures the stolid, charmingly evolving open spirit of the British people—though not likely to appeal to a broad American readership.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8027-1797-9
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
