Breaks no new ground but provides an excellent introduction to leading historians and the books every engaged American...
Interviews with 15 major American historians and the current chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Since 2013, financier and philanthropist Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, has corralled the heavy hitters of American history for conversations held in the Library of Congress, intended for the edification of our elected representatives. His admirable goal has been to provide “information about the great leaders and events of our country’s past, with the hope that…bringing the members together in a neutral, nonpartisan setting might modestly contribute toward reducing the seemingly increasing partisan rancor that has become so commonplace in Washington.” That aim has flopped, but the text, accompanied by a generous selection of archival images from the LOC, provides a smooth education in American history, with an emphasis on presidents. Eschewing controversy and avoiding penetrating insights, Rubenstein asks leading questions; his responders, all veterans of the lecture hall or book tour, lay out the facts and their expert interpretations. According to Jack D. Warren Jr., George Washington was America’s essential man. David McCullough joins the chorus supporting John Adams’ rising reputation. Though Thomas Jefferson’s continues its decline, Jon Meachem finds much to praise. Women are underrepresented, but Cokie Roberts has good things to say about Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and others. The longest biographies—Robert Caro’s five volumes on Lyndon Johnson and Taylor Branch’s three on Martin Luther King Jr.—are already classics only partly because of their literary brilliance. LBJ’s support of the Civil Rights Act was perhaps the most courageous political act of the century because he did it with full knowledge that it would inflict permanent damage on his party. MLK and his allies were certainly heroes of their time, but the villains he faced make a more vivid impression. Other contributors include H.W. Brands, Bob Woodward, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Breaks no new ground but provides an excellent introduction to leading historians and the books every engaged American should read.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982120-25-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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 Yorker staff 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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