A well-calibrated account of the foreign and domestic events that prepared Americans, psychologically and emotionally, for...
A history of the 100 years of “abuse, exploitation, mismanagement, and disrespect” suffered by the American colonies at the hands of Britain.
At the heart of the narrative lies the thrilling story of the 1745 taking of the French fortress at Louisbourg by a combined force of New England colonials and a halfhearted Royal Navy. Carr (All Brave Soldiers: The Sinking of the Anglo-Saxon, August 21, 1940, 2004, etc.) cleverly uses this triumphant moment to illustrate themes—British arrogance, indifference and greed—that he traces back to at least the end of the Interregnum where, after a period of benign neglect during which the colonists had become used to a large measure of self-government, Britain sought to impose greater control over its valuable possessions. Carr assembles the growing catalogue of American resentments: the heavy-handed and light-fingered rule of royal governors and military officials and their subsequent exoneration of any wrongdoing by British tribunals; the impressment of American citizens by the Royal Navy; seeming British indifference to the colonies’ vulnerability to Indian attack and French encirclement; Parliament’s imposition of taxes and trade restrictions; the shabby treatment of those who, either by their service or their financial aid, contributed to British success. Relaxing his galloping pace, Carr settles into the Louisbourg story, detailing the characters (his portrait of the conniving Admiral Warren is wonderful) and the campaign that captures so many of his themes. After the expenditure of much American blood and treasure, the colonials watched as British officials claimed credit, titles and plunder. Even more galling, the mother country, as always more concerned with global politics than American welfare, returned the hard-won prize only a few years later to France. No doubt Britain had her own list of grievances against the “ungrateful” colonies, but Carr restricts himself to the origins of American discontent, in place well before any tea was dumped into Boston harbor.
A well-calibrated account of the foreign and domestic events that prepared Americans, psychologically and emotionally, for the revolutionary break in 1776.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8027-1512-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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