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FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL

THE PERMANENCE OF RACISM

Here, as he did in And We Are Not Saved, Harvard Law School professor Bell offers dramatized accounts of the dilemma of race relations in America. Bell uses stories and fables to examine such themes as desire for homeland; the role of violence; interracial relationships; and scapegoating. He argues that ``racial nepotism'' on the part of whites allows de facto discrimination to exist even without animosity: ``When whites perceive that it will be profitable or at least cost-free to serve, hire, admit, or otherwise deal with blacks on a non-discriminatory basis, they do so. When they fear- -accurately or not—that there may be a loss, inconvenience, or upset to themselves or other whites, discriminatory conduct usually follows.'' Such racism will be with us forever, Bell contends. In the face of this, he calls for blacks to ``fashion a philosophy that both matches the unique dangers we face, and enables us to recognize in those dangers opportunities for committed living and humane service.'' Bell's method of making his points through stories allows for a certain moral complexity: Thoughtful persons work menial jobs; a dynamic black leader who has dedicated his life to his people and worries about his place in history falls in love with a white woman; space aliens who speak English with Reagan's voice arrive with gold, safe nuclear power, and ``special chemicals capable of unpolluting the environment''—and all they ask in exchange is that America's black citizens be turned over to them. But the stories, for all their fablelike power, are laden with great chunks of orotund exposition and numerous overworked adverbs. By using them, Bell forfeits the polemical passion of his introductory essay, while their simplistic dramatizations jar with the impressive legal erudition apparent elsewhere. Still, despite his lackluster writing, Bell offers insight into the rage, frustration, and yearning of being black in America.

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1992

ISBN: 0-465-06817-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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