A timely history to rebut anti-immigration rhetoric.
How newcomers rose together in America.
Diner, former director of the Goren Center for American Jewish History and author of We Remember With Reverence and Love, draws on memoirs, newspapers, novels, plays, and popular culture to offer a fresh perspective on the relationship between the Irish and the Jews from the end of the 19th century through the 1930s. Irish Catholics, who had come in the 1840s, and Eastern European Jews, who came in the 1880s, realized that they needed each other to defend against anti-immigration Protestants, who thought they would “replace the true Americans.” Because the Irish had come earlier, they “held the knobs,” Diner asserts, that opened doors, allowing Jews “to cross over so many thresholds.” The author focuses on four areas where Irish influence particularly helped Jews: public advocacy against antisemitism; urban politics, where the Irish held key positions; the labor front, where the Irish had been particularly successful organizers; and education. Although each group held some negative stereotypes about the other, in daily life, they “carved out shared spaces to pursue common goals.” Anecdotes and capsule biographies enliven Diner’s history as she portrays the many men and women who championed Jews and the Jews who benefited from their support. Education, not surprisingly, proved vital for Jewish children, who were taught by a large contingent of Irish schoolteachers; many joined the teaching profession themselves. Moreover, with a Jewish quota in private colleges, Jews were welcome in Catholic universities—e.g., Fordham, Notre Dame, DePaul—which were founded to help the sons of the Irish working class. In the 1930s, despite pockets of Irish antisemitism, there was strong Irish support of the Jewish campaign against Nazism. The vital cross-cultural alliance, Diner shows, created a capacious, embracing redefinition of what it means to be American.
A timely history to rebut anti-immigration rhetoric.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250243928
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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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