A fascinating historical detective story about an abortive 1822 slave insurrection in Charleston, S.C. Little survives in the historical record about Denmark Vesey, the free black who masterminded what could have been the most devastating uprising in American history. We don—t know where this former slave (he bought his freedom and became a prosperous carpenter) was born, the site of his execution and grave, or even what he looked like. In fact, nearly all copies of the chief record of the event, an official report of his trial, were confiscated and burned, being considered too dangerous for slaves to see. Just rumors of the plot terrified Charlestonians, for Vesey and his recruits intended to assassinate the governor and other high elected state officials, torch the city, murder the entire white population, including children, and escape to either Haiti or Africa. The plot was exposed, and by the end of the summer Vesey (who never confessed) and 76 followers were either executed or imprisoned. Despite its failure, the revolt had major consequences. John C. Calhoun, then secretary of war, began building up Charleston’s defenses until by the start of the Civil War it was the most heavily fortified city in the US. Robertson, a novelist (Booth, 1998) and biographer (Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes, 1994), deftly teases out tantalizing clues from the testimony without pushing his speculation too far. The book’s most intriguing aspect is his depiction of Vesey (who may have been a Muslim) as a forerunner of Malcolm X in his haughty charisma, his advocacy of black economic independence and Africanism, and his insistence on doing “everything that is necessary” to strike at the whites he held responsible for his people’s degradation. Robertson’s thoughtful chronicle restores to the record a powerful figure whose story continues to challenge America’s vision of itself as a place of equality and harmony. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-44288-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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