Renowned traitors are almost always heroes who have gone astray, otherwise what would be the tragedy of the betrayal? In this sense, a revisionist history of Benedict Arnold as ``revolutionary hero'' is not a surprising turn—but it is an edifying one. Martin (History/Univ. of Houston; Men in Rebellion, not reviewed, etc.) unpacks the various myths that have sprung up around Arnold—myths that were designed to recast the hero into the villain—and draws a truer portrait of this misunderstood American archetype. What he uncovers is a bright and ambitious man who miscalculated badly on one very significant act of his life. Born to a respectable family in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1741, Arnold watched helplessly as his father drank away his good family name and modest fortune. Arnold was taken out of school (he had thought himself destined for higher education at Yale) and apprenticed to successful merchants on his mother's side of the family. He did well in business, married advantageously, and was headed for a very comfortable life when duty, and the hope of laurels for the somewhat tarnished Arnold name, sent him into the military. He proved himself an able leader, but in 1780, Arnold rethought his cause and decided that the colonies, which appeared to be losing the war, would be better off appealing favorably to the British after all. He hoped that he would be viewed as a greater hero for recognizing this truth, and that the rest of the rebels would follow his lead. Instead, his defection gave the revolutionary cause a shot in the arm, as well as a villain to burn in effigy—an ironic end to his lifelong quest for respectability. Although Martin can be rather heavy-handed in pressing his central theme that Arnold's concern was to restore his family's reputation, this is still a worthy exposÇ of a truth underlying a cherished American myth. (24 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-8147-5560-7
Page Count: 540
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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