In a country that still has barely begun to reconcile with a long history of racism, white supremacy, and their...
The anatomy of a vicious American riot.
In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, dozens of American cities exploded in violence. Following four summers of what had been termed “race riots” in American cities, most urban areas—poor, underdeveloped, and increasingly populated by African-Americans who had been abandoned by both fleeing white populations and increasingly neglectful local, state, and national policies—proved to be dry tinder vulnerable to any spark. Amid this chaotic landscape, Washington, D.C., experienced some of the worst rioting in the country’s history. In this brief and brisk book, historian Walker (ACC Basketball: The Story of the Rivalries, Traditions, and Scandals of the First Two Decades of the Atlantic Coast Conference, 2011, etc.) provides an almost forensic history of the 1968 riots. After providing a capsule history of Washington and a chronicle of the city’s increasingly fractious race relations, the author provides a blow-by-blow breakdown of the riots, especially in the most fraught 48 hours or so from the evening of April 4. He manages to balance the astringent realities of racism in the city with a full acknowledgement of the excesses of some of the participants in the devastation. Similarly, he reveals the many mistakes and missteps as well as the halting successes of those trying to combat the riots, including public officials at the local and national levels, mostly white, but also Walter Washington, one of the first black mayors of an American city. In fewer than 200 pages, the author provides both the vital background to the riots as well as the long tale of their legacy well into the 21st century.
In a country that still has barely begun to reconcile with a long history of racism, white supremacy, and their consequences, Walker provides an important reminder about how any event related to these phenomena will have both deep roots and long-term consequences.Pub Date: April 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-19-084479-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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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