A deeply researched and nicely handled biography.
A study of the Founding Father encapsulating some of the early American values of industry, parsimony, and prudence.
It’s no surprise that George Washington was a prosperous man, from landed Virginia gentry to building and growing Mount Vernon. Historian Lengel (Thunder and Flames: Americans in the Crucible of Combat, 1917-1918, 2015, etc.), whose stewardship of Washington’s papers at the University of Virginia allows him intimate access into his subject’s mindset, emphasizes the founder’s motivating belief that a free exchange of virtuous interests would ultimately unite the young country. Owning land was the first definer of wealth in the Colonies, and in his capacities as surveyor and land investor, Washington also understood the necessity of harnessing the growth of tobacco. Marriage to the wealthy widow Martha Custis “offered George a shortcut to fortune” and greatly increased his vast acreage, allowing the couple and her children to live rather luxuriously, even frivolously, until the Revolution tempered Washington’s ideas about self-sufficiency and frugality. Henceforth, the not terribly educated but creative and incisive Virginian resolved to replace tobacco at Mount Vernon with wheat, thereby skirting British merchants directly, and he also added an innovative gristmill so the wheat and flour could be sold domestically. Washington’s own road to economic freedom mirrored that of the nascent nation. In his delineation of Washington’s role as military chief, Lengel makes some compelling assertions about the general, especially when he was mired in Valley Forge with scant supplies and a mutinous army. “Money is the sinews of war,” Washington declared, advocating for soldiers’ wages, eliminating waste, upholding transparency, and even establishing at the fort a “public market” with local farmers and tradespeople to sell directly to the army. The author organically traces the evolution of Washington’s free market thinking through his first and second presidential terms: building a national economy, encouraging domestic manufacturing, establishing a central bank, and developing a sense of unity of purpose.
A deeply researched and nicely handled biography.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-306-82347-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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