An admirably researched history of the long, successful career of America's first admiral and a popular hero of the Civil War, who is best remembered for his famous order in the heat of the battle at Mobile Bay, ``Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!'' To complement (and correct) the mainly army perspective found in most Civil War histories, Duffy (Target Hitler, not reviewed, etc.) presents a record of the frequently overlooked naval aspects of that conflict, as reflected in the career of David Farragut. Born in the South, Farragut went to sea as a midshipman when he was nine. While Duffy offers a summary of Farragut's life before the war, he is primarily interested in Farragut's Civil War years. He explains in some detail the often highly unorthodox strategies Farragut used to shut down Southern ports. And he explores Farragut's unwavering determination to overcome any obstacle in his way, including suspicions about his loyalty expressed by some fellow officers, aroused by the presence of a Southerner in the Federal navy; jealousies stirred by his early successes, which delayed promotion; and the opposition of bureaucrats in Washington, who attempted to reverse some of his naval strategies. Farragut, who held an unshakable belief in the necessity of preserving the Union (and who, having largely grown up at sea, had little sympathy for the South), always persevered. His brilliant campaigns on the Mississippi and his capture of New Orleans electrified the North. His blockade actions captured over 1,500 vessels. And his great victory at Mobile Bay against determined resistance, and under daunting circumstances, closed another Southern lifeline and diverted Confederate forces away from the defense of Atlanta. Duffy argues that Farragut's actions had more to do with the downfall of the Confederacy than some of the more celebrated land battles. A highly readable chronicle of a remarkable man, and an exciting account of decisive incidents in naval history. (25 photos, 6 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: March 14, 1997
ISBN: 0-471-04208-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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