An important addition to the literature of slavery and African-American history, complementing the now-standard work of...
Sturdy history of the Southern port city and its relationship to the “curious institution” of slavery.
As Bancroft Prize–winning historian Jones (American History/Brandeis Univ.; Creek Walking: Growing Up in Delaware in the 1950s, 2001, etc.) notes, Savannah, like most ports, was cosmopolitan compared to the interior. Its white inhabitants included Protestants, Jews and Catholics from many European nations, most recently arrived from the Old World, and almost all members of a vigorous Democratic Party, which served as “testament to the mutual if wildly unequal dependence of the planter-merchant-lawyer elite and large numbers of teamsters, dockworkers, and sawmill hands.” No matter how different, though, white Savannah was insistent in its defense of slavery. Jones opens with an account of a slave, Thomas Simms, who escaped via the port and traveled north to Boston, where his pursuers discovered him and forced his extradition, despite the protestations of abolitionist Northerners. Upon returning to Savannah, Simms received the maximum punishment allowed by law, 39 strokes with the lash, which, Simms later said, would have been more “but for the sympathy manifested for him in the North.” Drawing on a trove of documents and firsthand accounts, Jones depicts the ordinary life of both whites and blacks. When the Civil War arrived, Savannah’s secessionist fervor gave way to pragmatism, and, like those of Natchez and other Southern cities, its leaders surrendered quickly rather than let their city be attacked. The arriving Federals, Jones observes, were none too evolved in their view of the African-American populace (one colonel called them “perfectly childlike…no more responsible for their actions than so many puppies”), and Reconstruction was no more generous to most of them, replacing slavery with other forms of indenture.
An important addition to the literature of slavery and African-American history, complementing the now-standard work of Eugene Genovese, Kenneth Stampp and other chroniclers.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4293-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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 moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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