A richly illustrative defense of the role of ideas in the crafting of America’s national character.
A journey through the early-19th-century cultural and political visions that “shaped the volatile new nation.”
Distinguished historian Ayers, a winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln prizes and recipient of a National Humanities Medal, looks to “evoke the nation’s highest ideals of equality and mutual respect in the face of the nation’s failings.” He draws on an extensive array of journalists, orators, composers, novelists, naturalists, painters, entertainers, poets, sculptors, and composers who, in different ways, addressed the moral and political tensions attendant to social justice. The history unfolds in chronological segments, with each chapter ranging across themes and the visionaries who embraced them. In a typical chapter, Ayers explores immigration, the California Gold Rush, women’s rights, spiritualism, polygenesis, American literature, and the Greek Slave, a famous statue by Hiram Powers. Included in the chapter are biographical sketches of Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Louis Agassiz, Susan Fennimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Margaret Fuller, among others. The book includes not only people familiar to us from general histories of the period—e.g., Henry David Thoreau, Sojourner Truth, Andrew Jackson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Andrew Jackson, Dorothea Dix, John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed)—but also historical figures that may be unfamiliar to general readers, including Black abolitionist and writer Maria Stewart, who “urged her fellow Black Americans to prepare for God’s deliverance”; “self-taught portrait painter” George Catlin; Native American novelist Yellow Bird; and popular writer Lydia Marie Francis, author of The Frugal Housewife, a highly influential book that went through 33 editions. While Ayers’ inquisitive meandering makes for pleasurable reading, his claim that “key elements of national life crystallized” during these decades, a claim that would have connected his historical sketches, is largely undeveloped. Clear throughout, though, is his impassioned commitment to racial, gender, and religious tolerance.
A richly illustrative defense of the role of ideas in the crafting of America’s national character.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780393881264
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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