Stone defines this as "the story of the opening of a land and the building of a civilization" — and this is the sweeping effect of his saga of the opening of the Far West, specifically California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. Indians and trappers and hunters and a handful of settlers on the Coast made little impress on the empire belonging to Mexico, in 1840. And the man who opened the sluicegates was a man who had failed at everything else, "Captain" John Augustus Sutter. Ambition and imagination and determination launched the beginnings of his small empire in the valley of the Sacramento. Gold rounded out the story, as it was to round out other approaches to the opening of the West. Irving Stone tells all of the history in terms of the men — sometimes the women- who opened the land and built that civilization. It is almost overwhelming in the mass of material he has used, sometimes with a lack of selectivity that makes balance difficult for the reader, but always with the gift of the storyteller, the sense of drama, the appreciation of shifting values. Gold — silver — railroads- these proved the spurs; floods of immigrants followed various trails; communities mushroomed; violence and lawlessness gave way before self-constituted law of vigilantes; government took shape slowly; Washington granted statehood in desperation — or withheld it (as in the case of Utah) in order to win a dispute. Polygamy was the moot question, and for a generation and more harried the Mormons and brought virtual civil war. The War between the States had its repercussions. Fortunes were made- and lost. Major figures rose to peaks — and fell. The stories for each area overlapped- had their likenesses and their differences. It's a mammoth task, accomplished with zest and a keen sense of capturing history. Some of the versions he has accepted (the Donner Party tragedy, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, for example) will rouse heated controversy. But for the most part, this serves a purpose a kin to Bernard De Voto's recording of the days of the Conquistadores. In this addition to Mainstream of America, the storyteller outweighs the historian.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1956
ISBN: 042510544X
Page Count: 562
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1956
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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
