One of many Madison biographies, Cost’s book deserves high marks as a skillful study of an iconic historical figure.
An admiring biography of America’s fourth president.
James Madison (1751-1836) is known as the “Father of the Constitution.” Madison agreed—but only in retirement. The son of an influential planter and already a widely admired Virginia leader, he arrived in Philadelphia in 1787 with plans for a fundamental redesign of American government. Cost delivers a vivid account of Madison’s energetic efforts, followed by his role in the first Congress. Under his shrewd political leadership, that body produced tax laws and the Bill of Rights, among other significant accomplishments. “If Madison had suddenly dropped dead on September 29, 1789,” writes Cost, “he would still be remembered as one of the greatest Founding Fathers.” He did not, of course, and opposed Alexander Hamilton’s plans for a national bank, a national assumption of state debts, and policies to encourage industry (topics the author covered in his 2018 book, The Price of Greatness). Other historians claim that Madison reversed himself to become a Jeffersonian advocate of minimal government. However, Cost maintains that Madison remained consistent in affirming that government must ensure that its benefits were distributed equally. He opposed Hamilton’s proposals because they favored a privileged class. Jeffersonian ideals triumphed with the 1800 election, and Madison, serving as Jefferson’s secretary of state, enjoyed smooth sailing. By the time Madison became president in 1809, Hamilton was gone, but his realistic view of America’s place in the world trumped Jefferson’s virtuous, agrarian republic, which had no hope of dealing with powerful Britain. Unprepared for war in 1812, the U.S. bumbled through, but according to Cost, Madison showed his usual political acumen. Financing the war proved almost impossible, so he authorized a national bank. He supported internal improvements and the first protective tariff, co-opting Hamilton’s best economic ideas to lay the groundwork for America’s explosive growth.
One of many Madison biographies, Cost’s book deserves high marks as a skillful study of an iconic historical figure.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5416-9955-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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