by David S. Reynolds ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2008
A remarkable synthesis, impressive on many levels.
Award-winning historian Reynolds (English, American Studies/City Univ. of New York; John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, 2005, etc.) charts the political, cultural, economic, artistic, scientific and religious currents roiling America from the Era of Good Feelings to the verge of the Civil War.
Covering precisely the same slice of American history in half as many pages as Daniel Walker Howe’s recent and celebrated What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007), Reynolds applies his vast erudition to a period too often treated as mere prelude to the country’s most destructive war, the era that derives its name from the only figure between Monroe and Lincoln sufficiently charismatic to have been twice elected president. If the author’s storytelling falls short of his usual smooth standard, he may be forgiven for accomplishing what amounts to, even at this length, a remarkable feat of distillation. The political story features a familiar cast of sectional heroes—Clay, Calhoun and Webster—and Presidents Adams, Jackson, Van Buren and Polk dealing (or not dealing) with issues like slavery, Indian removal, tariffs, the Bank of the United States, nullification, war and the annexation of Texas. Reynolds is most adept handling the period’s art and literature—he is remarkably clear-eyed about the Transcendentalists—and he brilliantly explores the religious scene’s variety, tumult and frequent humbuggery. More than anything, he conveys the era’s sheer weirdness: where the self-made Van Buren could be successfully characterized as the out-of-touch aristocrat against the genuinely privileged Harrison; where real scientific achievement (the steamboat, telegraph and railroad) competed for legitimacy with the pseudo-scientific mesmerism, spiritualism and phrenology; where the Antimasons could be a national political force; where the Petticoat Affair could undo a presidential cabinet; where the common man president could be credibly lampooned as King Andrew; where the high art of Hawthorne and Melville competed for public favor with minstrel shows and the freakish attractions of P.T. Barnum. Abolitionism and prison reform and movements on behalf of sexual liberation, women’s rights, temperance and vegetarianism all flowered in this strange time, which gave us enduring phrases like “O.K.,” “Jim Crow” and “Manifest Destiny.”
A remarkable synthesis, impressive on many levels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-082656-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
Share your opinion of this book
More by David S. Reynolds
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.