A detailed examination of the origin, use, and future of nationalist ideologies.
Nationalism is a two-sided story, and both aspects need to be understood, says this comprehensive study.
It was not too long ago that academics and political commentators were talking about economic globalization and borderless connectivity. Now, says historian Storm, that sort of optimism seems quaint. Instead, there has been an increase in nationalism, with populist leaders promising to reassert national identity and cultural values. His aim in this book is to trace the forms of the new nationalism and assess its impact on populations. Nationalism can bind disparate groups together, but it often fosters coherence of the majority by depicting ethnic minorities as disloyal, dangerous enemies. Cultural nationalism, once embedded in the psyche, is enduring: for example, the collapse of the Soviet Union immediately saw the re-emergence of Russian ethnic nationalism. The Brexit campaign was explicitly cast in terms of reclaiming control and sovereignty. Storm examines how nationalism pervades modern culture through sport, entertainment, art, and even cooking. Sometimes the framework he sets up seems to be confusingly wide, and he comes close to defining all culture as nationalistic. He worries that the current trend of majority-rule nationalism has more negatives than positives and wonders if regional and multinational organizations could ameliorate the downside. He also suggests that global issues such as climate change, which will require cooperative action, might provide a balancing factor. Storm presents many interesting ideas, but the book is dauntingly complex; sometimes the narrative bogs down under the weight of references and footnotes.
A detailed examination of the origin, use, and future of nationalist ideologies.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780691233093
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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