An impressive informational effort about a nearly forgotten figure in American history.
Dunkak’s debut biography intricately documents the career of a revolutionary yet obscure American historical figure, lawyer John Morin Scott.
The relatively unknown Scott helped shape the early American political scene in the late 1700s. Born into a wealthy family, Scott attended Yale University and there managed to make friends with several influential people who sparked his interest in politics. He later had a major role in developing the important New York educational institution Kings College, which became Columbia University. Scott also became a key figure in the Whig Club of New York, an extension of the political Whig movement in England. This biography looks at several eras of Scott’s life and career, including his childhood, his legal career, his success during the provincial elections, his role in a controversy surrounding the salaries and tenures of Court of Appeals judges, and his Revolutionary War years. Scott, along with other leading lawyers, fought to make sure that religious dissenters of that time would receive equal treatment and recognizance under the law. Although the historical record doesn’t contain a wealth of information about John Morin Scott’s early years, Dunkak attempts to document his life to the best of his ability, and, overall, delivers a well-researched and scholarly biography. He thoroughly backs up every piece of information, no matter how seemingly insignificant, with supporting evidence and highly detailed footnotes. In particular, Dunkak explains the political schema with maturity and tact. Although the book can be a bit verbose at times, it’s an astute, intelligent reflection on Morin’s life and era.
An impressive informational effort about a nearly forgotten figure in American history.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478144397
Page Count: 218
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 Yorker staff 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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