An engaging celebration of public service through the stories of groundbreaking civic leaders.
A veteran of municipal government highlights dynamic pioneers of the Progressive Era.
In this history book, Dykstra (co-author: Pinery Boys, 2017, etc.) draws inspiration from her years of work in New York City government agencies and traces the modern concept of public service to its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The volume profiles 13 aspects of good governance, from a newly formed state’s duty to care for children to the battles involved in developing an efficient system of public transportation, and focuses on the civic leaders who shaped each cause. Few of the individuals featured are household names, though many are famous within their fields—William Mulholland established the Los Angeles water system; Charles Horace Mayo and his brother, William James Mayo, founded the Mayo Clinic and led public health efforts—while others are less well-known, like sanitation czar George Waring and school superintendent Ella Flagg Young. In occasionally vivid prose (“At 46th Street and the East River, one notorious pile of horseshit, 30 feet high and 200 feet long, sat in an empty lot and poisoned the air for 30 blocks”), the author transports readers to the unhealthy, unsafe, and frequently corrupt environments that the reform-minded bureaucrats of the period confronted and makes a compelling case for the lasting value of their work. A useful chapter summarizes the conclusions drawn from this study of reformers—they share curiosity, perseverance, and communication skills, among other traits. Dykstra acknowledges the lack of racial diversity in her subjects and points out some of their misdeeds, like Melvil Dewey’s (“a complicated, unlikeable genius”) harassment of women. But on the whole, the book’s innovators are applauded (though the author finds it necessary to write of social investigator Frances Kellor’s relationship with her female partner of many decades “it is not known if their relationship was sexual”). Despite its limitations, the volume is a solid examination of civic engagement in a foundational era that presents an informative and engrossing introduction to key individuals.
An engaging celebration of public service through the stories of groundbreaking civic leaders.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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