A prodigiously researched and exuberantly told political biography/history.
A robust chronicle of Franklin Roosevelt’s quest to stay in the White House.
After recounting Roosevelt’s rise to the presidency in 1932, historian Pietrusza creates a brisk, spirited narrative, abundantly populated and bursting with anecdotes, revealing the president’s trials and turmoil as he faced reelection. Despite the considerable achievements of the New Deal, Roosevelt’s win was not a foregone conclusion. The nation was beset by racism, antisemitism, and a fear of importing socialism or communism. Roosevelt also faced a host of formidable opponents. As one was overcome (Roosevelt’s fierce opponent Huey Long, Louisiana’s feisty governor and senator, was assassinated in 1935), another challenger popped up. Among Roosevelt’s detractors were Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge, who thought FDR was on a “mad course of socialism”; Dr. Francis E. Townsend, ardent promoter of old age pensions, who hated FDR’s social security plan; Father Charles E. Coughlin, a powerful and influential “Detroit radio priest,” who fomented dissension; Socialist candidate Norman Thomas; and fearsome newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, the author notes, “hated internationalism and dictators (although, some ominously said, not all dictators), but also taxes, unions, and anyone telling him what to do with his prized newspapers.” Pietrusza follows the aspirations of possible Republican candidates and the unlikely emergence of “lackluster” Kansas Governor Alf Landon as the party’s choice. Landon promised fiscal responsibility, and because “New Deal spending had lost its charm,” Roosevelt’s policies were ripe for criticism. Poll numbers showed a close race throughout the campaign. “As 1936 commenced,” notes the author, “Franklin possessed at least half the vote, though not nearly as solidly as he liked. If Republicans surged and third parties rumbled, he might fall into an Electoral College trap and follow Herbert Hoover into a Depression-cursed, one-term oblivion.” In the end, he prevailed splendidly, winning 71% of the Black vote, 78% of the Catholic vote, and 90% of the Jewish vote.
A prodigiously researched and exuberantly told political biography/history.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63576-777-3
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Diversion Books
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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
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