A pertinent work of keen understanding of the complex Hawaiian story.
Revisionist, evenhanded look at Hawaiian dynastic tenacity against ceaseless challenges by larger imperialist powers.
The United States’ annexation of Hawaii in 1898 was not quite a clear-cut, naked act of economic and military rapacity; it required decades of collusion in the Americanization of this highly strategic Pacific archipelago. Novelist and historian Haley (The Texas Supreme Court: A Narrative History, 1836-1986, 2013, etc.) presents a nuanced history that first takes into account the complex and oppressive relationship between the chiefs and the kanaka, the people of the land, in an enormously stratified society that was controlled by a system of kapu (“set apart, holy, forbidden”). Arriving in 1778, Capt. James Cook, declaring the islands the Sandwich Islands, recognized the culture as Polynesian, and while their iron and white skins rendered the English sailors godlike in the eyes of the natives, familiarity bred contempt (the native women avidly mated with these otherworldy men yet the venereal diseases’ spread might have originated from previous contact with Japanese sailors and others), and in a melee, Cook was overwhelmed and stabbed to death. With the help of American weapons, King Kamehameha became undisputed chief of the islands, creating central authority and wealth. However, the allure of the islands attracted Russian, British, French and American vessels as a Pacific crossroads in which exotic fruits like pineapple from the Philippines were introduced, as well as the inevitable “resource extraction” begun in the form of the harvesting of sandalwood trees by American entrepreneurs. The efforts by Christian missionaries and American advisers, the destruction of the kapu system by Queen Ka’ahumanu and the addiction to luxury items (sugar) by the chiefly class all helped undermine the native culture. Haley underscores how remarkable it was that the islands were able to withstand coercion by French, British and American forces for as long as they did.
A pertinent work of keen understanding of the complex Hawaiian story.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-312-60065-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
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. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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