A knowledgeable history of what’s lost when willful blindness dominates our politics.
The dangerous appeal of falsehoods cloaked in the flag.
Erdozain (author of the acclaimed One Nation Under Guns, 2024) pens a concise, intelligent analysis of overweening patriotism’s ill effects. Of the Founding Fathers, John Adams alone grasped the peril of believing in a “special providence for Americans.” Not coincidentally, he and his son, John Quincy Adams, were the only opponents of slavery elected president before 1860. Erdozain is particularly sharp on Abraham Lincoln, showing how his interpretation of patriotism fortified the American “myth of redemptive violence.” Contrary to abolitionists, Northern journalists, and advisers arguing that Southern states should be allowed to secede without a war, Lincoln prioritized preserving the Union. When the Confederacy captured South Carolina’s Fort Sumter, he opted against measures that might have cooled tensions, Erdozain writes. The escalating standoff “provided a lightning rod for patriotic rage and the larger goal of reunion.” Opponents of the war “had been played” by the president. Erdozain’s Progressive Era heroine is Jane Addams, who sought to imbue patriotism with internationalism and establish the U.S. as “a peace nation.” During the Cold War, this mantle was taken up by Martin Luther King Jr., whose landmark anti-Vietnam War speech—called “facile” by The New York Times—showed that “he loved his country and saw criticism as an expression of that love.” It would presumably pain Addams and King to learn that today, per Erdozain, America’s yearly contribution to the United Nations equals “a mere seven hours of Pentagon spending.” The book’s epigraph, which cites Molly Ivins’ paean to “apple-cart upsetters and plain old mumpish eccentrics who just didn’t want to be like everybody else,” raises hopes that Erdozain intends to introduce readers to unjustly obscure figures. If that seldom happens, it doesn’t make his conclusions any less righteous.
A knowledgeable history of what’s lost when willful blindness dominates our politics.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9798217087174
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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