An alternate history rife with violence and class oppression, presented with rigor and detail, though with a strident tone...
Penetrating account of xenophobia and the officially sanctioned persecution of minorities and the politically undesirable.
Feldman (When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes, 2005, etc.) has his hackles up regarding the labyrinthine history of scapegoating and political repression in the Land of the Free, arguing that we tend to excuse or misunderstand this narrative, which actually tells the story of how the powerful keep the powerless in check. Beginning with the ugly lynching of a supposed German “spy” in an Illinois coal town, the author assembles a concrete narrative spanning the years from World War I through the Church Committee investigation of the 1970s, showing that governmental and private forces consistently ginned up “red scares” in response to social and labor unrest. Few remember, for instance, that Woodrow Wilson spoke of “the fine gold of untainted Americanism,” adding to anti-foreign suspicions before WWI. After the war, which saw the demise under pressure of the Socialist party, the expulsion of anarchists like Emma Goldman and attacks on the radical Wobblies, this patriotic fervor led to the first Red Scare and the Palmer raids, “a cynical and sordid manipulation of the American public by government and business leaders.” Improbably, J. Edgar Hoover was appointed to lead the growing Bureau of Investigation in 1924 as a supposed moderate, “a choice that would have devastating long-term consequences” for American civil liberties. Feldman argues that the federal government’s hostility to radicals and undesirable immigrants continued through WWII—most notoriously, via the internment of Japanese Americans. After the war, Joseph McCarthy witch hunts continued the hysteria—as one fired teacher recalled, “There were many wrecked lives.” Even as the country became more progressive, Hoover relentlessly pursued civil-rights and antiwar groups through the FBI’s notorious Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Feldman is an attentive historian, unearthing many disturbing, forgotten examples of official malfeasance. (He only addresses the post-9/11 era in an epilogue.)
An alternate history rife with violence and class oppression, presented with rigor and detail, though with a strident tone that renders it somewhat dry.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-42534-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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