by James C. Thompson II ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 16, 2011
An often astute and scholarly work that’s hampered by its reductionism.
A spirited reconsideration of the causes of the American Revolution that takes aim at the views of acclaimed historian Bernard Bailyn.
Author and lecturer Thompson (The Dubious Achievement of the First Continental Congress, 2011, etc.) offers a reinterpretation of the Revolutionary War era that focuses on dynamic plays for power rather than a more romantic vision of it as a leap forward for social justice and a commitment to democratic ideology. In fact, he avers, the war wasn’t democratically chosen at all but was the result of the relentless agitation on the part of “a radical fringe of malcontents.” In 1760s England, he says, a “new underclass” appeared as a result of the birth of industrial society, creating an opportunity for a “political pest” named John Wilkes. His “rallying cry” for liberty, Thompson says, was picked up in the Colonies by Samuel Adams, the older cousin of John Adams, who used a message of “natural rights” to spark a political revolution that was performed in two acts: First, it was argued that King George III had violated the colonists’ civil rights via taxation without representation, and secondly, that he had infringed upon their natural rights. However, the author points out that even as late as 1775—approximately a decade into Adams’ indefatigable campaign—the vast majority of colonists still opposed a war for the sake of secession. In lucid prose, which draws on painstakingly meticulous research, Thompson goes on to show the ways in which Adams and Thomas Jefferson heavily relied upon the natural rights philosophy of the British philosopher John Locke, although he contends that their interpretations fashioned Locke into a far more radical thinker than he actually was. Thompson’s argument is a concise one as laid out in this book, and it’s remarkable how much historical territory he covers in a relatively short monograph. He also provides readers with incisive introductions to Adams and Wilkes, two extraordinarily important figures in early American history who are sometimes denied their rightful stature. Although the author’s position is not entirely original, he presents a clear encapsulation of an alternative reading of the nation’s genesis. However, he often undermines his argument by employing gratuitously inflammatory rhetoric. In fact, much of the book is an explicit critique of Bailyn’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1968 book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, which Thompson characterizes as “demonstrably false” or disingenuous. If Bailyn overstated the moral and ideological elements of the American Revolution, it seems that Thompson is just as reductionist in the other direction, as he argues that the “visionaries” behind the revolt did not mean to “encourage public deliberation, but to destroy their opponents in the mind of the people and to build parties that would help them to gather the political power they needed to promote their own ideologies.” Furthermore, it seems rather hyperbolic to claim that Jefferson’s view of natural rights is “nothing like Locke’s,” even it is different in many respects.
An often astute and scholarly work that’s hampered by its reductionism.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Commonwealth Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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