A remarkable, often poignant—but never sentimental—chronicle from a historian (University of Connecticut; America's Business, 1984, etc.) and his wife of life as it once was in their small Connecticut hometown of Hammond. The text is marred only by some clumsy writing and information overload. Presented with an amazingly comprehensive collection of letters and other memorabilia belonging to the Taintor family, from whose descendants the Robertsons bought their home in 1967, the couple used this treasure trove as a basis to write the history not only of their home but also of a particular place and time. The house—built circa 1796 by the first Taintors to settle in Hammond- -is in itself a record of changing fashions, increased fortunes, and evolving technology. By 1820, the Taintors' more elevated status led to an extensive remodeling and modernizing: The old stone chimney was replaced by six brick ones, and an elegant front staircase was built. The Robertsons record not only these architectural changes but also the familiar cycles of birth and death, wealth and poverty. They also note cultural changes— pointing out, for example, that not until the late 19th century were Christmas and weddings celebrated with all the trappings that we think of as timeless. The authors describe how Hammond, once a busy regional center—the town reached its maximum population of 1,379 in 1800—became a typical small New England town as the declining fertility of the land and the lack of economic opportunity led to an exodus during the early 19th century—an exodus that the Taintors joined as first one or two family members, then entire generations, moved to the big cities or out West. Meanwhile, Hammond's old family homes became summer places where widely scattered families gathered and briefly re-created the ancestral notions of home and hearth. History from laundry lists to family letters, but no less riveting than that of more sublime pedigree. Despite its flaws: a landmark portrait of small-town America.
Pub Date: April 28, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-019017-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
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
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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