Apparently, you had to be there.
The creative ferment and “cultural craziness” of 1960s New York City.
Disruption and confrontation were the rules of the day for the New York City avant-garde, from the Beat Generation in full rebel flower as Hoberman’s account begins in the late 1950s to the increasingly violent and politicized counterculture of 1970-71, when it ends. Drawing on interviews with participants and on research in the archives of alternative newspapers, primarily the Village Voice and East Village Other, Hoberman repeats plenty of insider gossip, some of it admittedly unverifiable: Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol’s putative rivalry over Edie Sedgwick, for example, or the film never released because one of the actors made “several tasteless references to Warhol’s sex life.” The dish, plus the mentions of virtually every downtown address where people lived and worked, gives a vivid sense of the ’60s avant-garde as a physically and personally close-knit group and the art they created as a collective enterprise. Minutely detailed descriptions of movies, plays, concerts, and “happenings,” from underground classics (the Living Theatre’s Paradise Now) to the truly obscure (Barbara Rubin’s multimedia event, Caterpillar Changes), also make palpable the period’s anything-goes ethos, although it must be noted that giving equal attention to the epochal and the ephemeral drags down the narrative momentum. Readability is also hampered by Hoberman’s jumbled chronological framework; it’s typical of his scattershot organization that a lively account of the “quintessentially East Village” Ridiculous Theater production Conquest of the Universe, featuring downtown stalwarts Taylor Mead, Mary Woronov, and Ondine, is followed 60 pages (and many intervening stories) later by the information that director John Vaccaro had fired playwright Charles Ludlam and hired a lawyer to prevent him from mounting a competing production. The abrupt ending reinforces the impression of an author not entirely in control of his material. Hoberman’s undisciplined presentation may echo the attitude of its subjects, but it doesn’t make for engaging reading.
Apparently, you had to be there.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781804290866
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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
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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