Based largely on correspondences among her relatives in the 1800s, debut author Harris gives a firsthand account of the life a steam locomotive engineer.
While the steam powered train may seem like a romantic form of travel in comparison to more modern methods, the reality of its operation was complex and dangerous; in order to safely pilot their trains, engineers had to be highly skilled and able to endure hardships ranging from long hours to incompetent co-workers, all while maintaining a machine that could explode if not cared for properly. It was under such conditions that locomotive engineer John Henry Bailey Jr. spent his working life. Bailey cleaned steam engines as a teenager in Canada before moving on to pilot them for the Union Army in the last few years of the American Civil War. Although Bailey’s engagement in the Civil War was limited (he didn’t arrive in Virginia until 1864), it is a compellingly unique perspective to follow the advancement of the Union Army as seen through the eyes of a civilian locomotive engineer. After the war Bailey’s life takes on a more mundane existence as he marries, has children and eventually finds work as a train engineer in the Midwest. Throughout these years he has an ongoing correspondence with his brother, Francis, who, after his own time in the Civil War serving in the Union Navy, makes a living as a policeman in Albany, N.Y. As is fitting for a family correspondence, this involves attention to common domestic concerns such as marriage, illness, death and financial difficulties. Although still seen through the eyes of a locomotive engineer, these topics don’t prove as interesting as Bailey’s time in the Civil War. And while the portions of the book concerning the Civil War prove to be the most thrilling, Civil War enthusiasts will likely be disappointed as only about a third of the book involves the conflict. Readers interested in broader family histories of the period are more likely to be satisfied by the book on the whole. A unique perspective on a major historical event that spends too much time on the quotidian.
Pub Date: July 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461129547
Page Count: 275
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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