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THE TRIAL OF MADAME CAILLAUX

A skillful take on France's belle Çpoque, using the celebrated 1914 trial of Henriette Caillaux for the murder of Le Figaro editor Gaston Calmette as a springboard to examine a wide range of contemporary topics. Dubbing his method ``microhistory''—whereby the past is approached ``through one exemplary event or person''- -Berenson (History/UCLA) looks at French attitudes toward divorce, the place of women in society, masculine ``honor'' and dueling, the growing power of the popular press, and the lingering psychological damage of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. On March 16, 1914, Henriette Caillaux, wife of the head of the left-leaning Radical Party, entered the office of Gaston Calmette, whose influential journal was engaged in a campaign of vilification against Mme. Caillaux's husband, Joseph. ``You know why I have come?'' the elegantly dressed matron asked. ``Not at all, Madame,'' Calmette replied. Without another word, Mme. Caillaux drew a pistol from her muff and pumped six bullets into Calmette. Four months later, the editor's assailant stood trial for murder. Addressing the events of the week-long trial day-by-day, Berenson discusses how Mme. Caillaux's defense depended on convincing the jury that hers was an uncontrollable ``crime of passion'' rather than a premeditated political act. The author offers interesting insights into how this defense reflected the widely held conviction that ``real'' women were in thrall to their emotions and not responsible for their actions in such crimes. The ploy was successful: Henriette was found not guilty. Here, Berenson is especially sensitive in conveying the frustrations felt by many women of the time and the ironies inherent in their position. Speaking of male attitudes toward marital sex, for example, he writes, ``One's wife was not to be an object of sexual desire, since to desire her was to degrade her.'' Freshly researched, elegantly written, always engrossing. (Twelve b&w illustrations.)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-520-07347-9

Page Count: 291

Publisher: Univ. of California

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991

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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 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

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

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