Another winner from Brands.
A fine account of one of the most famous opponents to America’s entrance into World War II.
Historian Brands, bestselling author of numerous books on American history, writes that while nearly everyone today considers Hitler a loathsome figure, this was not the case throughout the 1930s. When Germany’s army marched into Austria and Czechoslovakia after 1938 and talk of another war began, U.S. Congress quickly proclaimed neutrality. Two years later, polls showed that most Americans were opposed to getting involved, and Roosevelt, accustomed to telling voters what they wanted to hear, regularly assured Americans that he agreed. Still an international hero, Charles Lindbergh visited Europe that year, receiving red carpet treatment, meeting national leaders, and touring factories that were contributing to the war effort. He came away with a low opinion of Britain and France, but he praised Germany’s order, prosperity, and military technology. After its September 1939 invasion of Poland, he spoke on national radio to warn Americans not to interfere. He kept a diary and journalists vacuumed up his opinions, so Brands has no trouble describing the vivid clash of ideas between his two principal subjects. Lindbergh joined the isolationist America First Committee, but his Midwestern “simplicity” often harmed his cause. A fall 1941 speech urging Jewish Americans to stop pushing the nation toward war produced media outrage. During a 25-minute speech in Iowa, Lindbergh “not only destroyed his reputation—he expected this—but simultaneously discredited the antiwar movement and killed any plausible alternative to [Roosevelt’s] globalist vision.” Toward the end of this gripping, if unedifying tale, Brands adds that Lindbergh was wrong about only “one big thing”: that Americans would recoil from the responsibility as they did after World War I. “Lindbergh saw the path ahead and found it appalling,” writes the author. “Americans trod the path and found it irresistible.”
Another winner from Brands.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550413
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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