The one biography of Washington to read in this semiquicentennial year.
The prolific historian takes on the first among equals of the Founding Fathers.
One might think that there’s not much more one can say about George Washington than has already been said in a mountain of books. Well-known historian Brands adds materially to the literature by starting on an anthropological note, painting a portrait not just of Washington, but also of the world he was born into. Washington’s ancestors, perhaps ironically, wound up in Virginia for siding with the crown in the English Civil War, and though going abroad constituted a kind of exile, they became wealthy, landed gentry, a class that “had far more land than they could work themselves. Anyway, they considered physical labor demeaning.” The solution was the purchase of enslaved people to work those lands—a matter that would gnaw at Washington for the rest of his life. “I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it,” he wrote soon after retiring from command during the Revolutionary War. But all the same, he continued to be an enslaver and, indeed, took pains that those in his servitude could not escape while he was in residence in abolitionist-inclined Philadelphia, then the capital. “The president preferred that the public see him as an enlightened slaveholder,” Brand writes, though that supposed enlightenment required subterfuge. Brands is also strong on the tangled relations of the new republic with Indigenous peoples and with the European powers, with Washington’s famous utterance that “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” For all his contradictions, Brand writes, Washington was a born soldier who came along at exactly the right moment, a timeliness by virtue of which, the author concludes, “he gained a timeless reputation.”
The one biography of Washington to read in this semiquicentennial year.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9780385551557
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
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
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
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