A comprehensive collection of archival, police-related images.
Bultema’s (Guardians of Angels, 2013) book collects photographs from a century-and-a-half of American law enforcement culture.
Police forces in the United States have changed forms over the decades, from loosely organized pawns of 19th-century urban politicians to the more professional organizations of the Progressive Era to the high-tech operations of today. As Bultema points out, photography had a parallel history—from the laborious processes of the 1800s to the ubiquitous 35 mm film of the 20th century to today’s digital cameras. Here, he collects more than 300 images from American police history and organizes them into a pictorial account. The high-quality reproductions range from 19th-century daguerreotypes and tintype portraits to 21st-century images of police departments and memorials. There are, of course, the expected images of groups of white policemen posing together with weapons and vehicles, but there are also less-common photos of western Native American police forces and early policewomen, as well as stirring shots of crime scenes, violent altercations, and arrests. In one of the book’s most unforgettable images, for example, New York City police officers stand beside victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. There are also more nuanced photos, such as one of officers lining up down the block in 1930s Boston to take a sergeant’s exam. This is by no means a critical history of policing; Bultema, a former member of the Los Angeles Police Department, writes that he firmly believes that a police officer’s role is “order versus chaos, cop versus criminal, good versus evil.” Readers won’t find any insight into the origins of America’s current policing crisis here, and the book handles historical moments of social upheaval, such as the 1965 Watts riots in LA, without much nuance or context. However, one could argue that the photographs largely speak for themselves and that the immediacy of the images of strikes and riots—many of them full-page bleeds—will allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Anyone perusing this volume, whether a police buff or not, will find photos that spark curiosity and interest.
A comprehensive collection of archival, police-related images.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9974251-0-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: P.D. Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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