An intriguing, if unconvincing, examination of Irish servitude in America.
A debut book chronicles the enslavement and brutal treatment of the Irish by the British for nearly 200 years.
The story of African-American slavery is a familiar one, comprehensively covered by scholars. Comparatively neglected is the plight of the Irish, who were the chief source of slave labor for the British American colonies for more than 179 years. In this slim volume, Byrd traces the woeful treatment of the Irish at the hands of their British tormentors, beginning with an exploration of the origins of vitriolic sentiment in the 12th century, which lampooned the Irish as poor, vulgar, and lazy. The demand for labor in the British colonies, as well as the desire among many in England to reduce the Irish population in Europe, inspired the practice of forcibly sending Irish prisoners to places like Virginia to work. Eventually, Irish children were rounded up and transported as well. According to the author, in 1625, King James I delivered a proclamation that authorized selling Irish prisoners into slavery, and they were bought and traded like cattle and subjected to unspeakably inhumane treatment. The laws considered any child born to a slave also a slave, and owners purposely bred Irish and black slaves to increase their holdings. Eventually, both Irish and black slaves rebelled, and according to Byrd, their oppressors invented the notion of whiteness as a means to sow dissent among them. The author also discusses the evolution of white racism out of this strategy, the process by which the Irish became understood to be white, and the genealogical legacy left by planned miscegenation. Byrd’s study is clearly written and admirably concise. In addition, he evinces an impressive freedom from conventional historical accounts, boldly willing to soberly entertain counternarratives. But the brevity of the book necessitates that some of the arguments proffered are hypercondensed, and this can diminish their persuasiveness. Most scholars would argue that Byrd largely conflates the albeit brutal indentured servitude of the Irish with the chattel slavery experienced by Africans. The author’s study, while provocative, is simply not rigorous or expansive enough to inspire a rejection of the academic consensus view.
An intriguing, if unconvincing, examination of Irish servitude in America.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8563-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.
From the former Talking Heads frontman, a supremely intelligent, superbly written dissection of music as an art form and way of life.
Drawing on a lifetime of music-making as an amateur, professional, performer, producer, band member and solo artist, Byrne (Bicycle Diaries, 2009) tackles the question implicit in his title from multiple angles: How does music work on the ear, brain and body? How do words relate to music in a song? How does live performance relate to recorded performance? What effect has technology had on music, and music on technology? Fans of the Talking Heads should find plenty to love about this book. Steering clear of the conflicts leading to the band’s breakup, Byrne walks through the history, album by album, to illustrate how his views about performance and recording changed with the onset of fame and (small) fortune. He devotes a chapter to the circumstances that made the gritty CBGB nightclub an ideal scene for adventurous artists like Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Tom Verlaine and Television. Always an intensely thoughtful experimenter, here he lets us in on the thinking behind the experiments. But this book is not just, or even primarily, a rock memoir. It’s also an exploration of the radical transformation—or surprising durability—of music from the beginning of the age of mechanical reproduction through the era of iTunes and MP3s. Byrne touches on all kinds of music from all ages and every part of the world.
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936365-53-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Making movies may be ``hard work,'' as the veteran director continually reminds us throughout this slight volume, but Lumet's simple-minded writing doesn't make much of a case for that or for anything else. Casual to a fault and full of movie-reviewer clichÇs, Lumet's breezy how-to will be of little interest to serious film students, who will find his observations obvious and silly (``Acting is active, it's doing. Acting is a verb''). Lumet purports to take readers through the process of making a movie, from concept to theatrical release—and then proceeds to share such trade secrets as his predilection for bagels and coffee before heading out to a set and his obsessive dislike for teamsters. Lumet's vigorously anti-auteurist aesthetic suits his spotty career, though his handful of good movies (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City, and Q&A) seem to have quite a lot in common visually and thematically as gutsy urban melodramas. Lumet's roots in the theater are obvious in many of his script choices, from Long Day's Journey into Night to Child's Play, Equus, and Deathtrap. ``I love actors,'' he declares, but don't expect any gossip, just sloppy kisses to Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and ``Betty'' Bacall. Lumet venerates his colleague from the so-called Golden Age of TV, Paddy Chayevsky, who scripted Lumet's message-heavy Network. Style, Lumet avers, is ``the way you tell a particular story''; and the secret to critical and commercial success? ``No one really knows.'' The ending of this book, full of empty praise for his fellow artists, reads like a dry run for an Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, the standard way of honoring a multi-Oscar loser. There's a pugnacious Lumet lurking between the lines of this otherwise smarmy book, and that Lumet just might write a good one someday.
Pub Date: March 27, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43709-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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