An informed, astute investigation of Cherokee survivance.
How an Indigenous people resisted, adapted, and endured during an era of colonization.
Unlike most previous studies of the Cherokee, which have tended to focus on the first half of the 19th century, this thorough and insightful history emphasizes the period from early contact with Europeans to the end of the 18th century. The book acknowledges the challenges in telling this story given the enormous gaps in the historical record, especially from a Cherokee perspective, and the untrustworthiness of European and American accounts, especially English translations of Cherokee speech. Nevertheless, the narrative that emerges here draws attention to a people’s vigorous, creative, and long-standing agency in affirming a sense of collective identity. As Narrett explains, “This book is not simply about what Europeans ‘did’ to ‘Indians’ as victims of colonialism. It concerns the changing and often tumultuous relations between Native peoples as they variously fought, made peace, or allied with one another in the light of new and often unprecedented challenges.” Particularly well documented here is the role played by Cherokee women in negotiating those challenges: “Cherokee diplomacy was not simply a matter of what came top-down or was decided by headmen in conferences with colonial and later U.S. officials. Cherokee women sustained community not only in daily tasks but by making their voices heard and taking risks in the political-social sphere.” Also effective are the author’s descriptions of the complexities of political negotiations with settler populations, the role of slavery in Cherokee culture, and the evolution of self-definition that emerged in response to the pressures of colonization. The concluding section of the work ably traces connections to the present-day Cherokee and to the endurance of “ideals of communal harmony, spiritual connectedness to nature, and the capacity to negotiate differences among themselves.”
An informed, astute investigation of Cherokee survivance.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780674258204
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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