A rich history of regional distinctions, especially as they shaped the antebellum Republic.
A study of how the eponymous demarcation line has long been seen as far more than just an abstract border.
The surveying party led by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon was organized in the aftermath of the French and Indian War to settle border disputes among Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The region, writes Florida State historian Gray, had long been torn by war: neighbor against neighbor, white against Indigenous, with spectacular violence committed against the peaceful peoples of the Susquehanna River area. Indeed, “the story of the Line is really a story of Americans and their relationship to government,” a relationship largely marked by hostility and antagonism, and by the usual ironies: The settlers along the borderlands demanded security from the government but resisted paying the taxes to underwrite that protection. Ironically, the Mason-Dixon line, which took that name decades after the survey was completed, would eventually come to be seen as the dividing line between North and South, between slavery and freedom—ironically, that is, because, as Gray notes in this data-rich narrative, for much of the 18th century New York had nearly three times more enslaved people than Pennsylvania, whose Quaker leaders took to abolitionism early on. During the Civil War, though they remained in the Union, Delaware and Maryland allowed slavery, at least in a roundabout way. Their politicians opposed the slave trade but not slavery itself, which had the effect of raising the prices of enslaved people. Delaware defied emancipation, albeit “the position of Delaware’s Democrats was more the stuff of farce than even the rudest form of political posturing.” Finally, if briefly, the Line marked the division between free and slave states, long after it had acquired ethnic partition lines that more or less continue today, grouping a few Indigenous communities, a small number of African Americans, and sometimes contending European populations dominated by Protestant German and Scots-Irish farmers.
A rich history of regional distinctions, especially as they shaped the antebellum Republic.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780674987616
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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