In a well-crafted compilation of letters, lurid newspaper accounts, legal documents, and photographs and drawings of the day, Cooper (a former Columbia law professor) tells a story of high aspirations, of a failed marriage and a scandalous divorce, and of a 1860's-style murder that might have been dreamed up by William Dean Howells. Abby Sage is a young schoolteacher from an old Massachusetts family when, in 1857, she meets and marries 39-year-old Irish immigrant Daniel McFarland and travels west with him to the frontier town of Madison, Wisconsin. There, McFarland's supposed land holding turns out to be chimerical—just as McFarland turns out to be a ``beastly'' alcoholic prone to fantasy and violence. Abby has to support their growing family by writing and acting, and soon the couple and their two children return east, to New York. Meanwhile, Albert Deane Richardson, youngest son of Massachusetts farmers, also heads west—to Kansas and Colorado, to pursue a journalism career that places him in a Confederate prison during the Civil War and then brings him to the top of his profession in the heyday of newspaper publishing in New York's Printing House Square. It's here, in the late 1860's, that Abby and Albert meet in the homes and offices of mutual friends, including New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley. But when Abby decides to leave the increasingly brutal McFarland and to accept Albert's offer of marriage, all hell breaks loose—and when McFarland shoots Albert dead in the mail room of the Tribune, public sentiment sides with him because he's seen as the victim of the new tide of fearsome women's rights then sweeping the nation. In a show trial, McFarland is acquitted (he ends up drinking himself to death in Leadville, Colorado). Abby, undaunted, publishes in the Tribune an account of her marriage and Albert's murder, and goes on to distinguish herself as a journalist. Evocative and entertaining popular history. (Eight pages of photographs)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-55778-626-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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