A fascinating look at some of the less familiar history in the days leading up to the Civil War.
A look at the events leading to the Civil War, with emphasis on attempts to avoid the conflict.
Winik begins his account in the 1850s, when the forces that would lead to secession were building. The political questions of the day were whether slavery should expand beyond the Southern and border states where it was already in effect and, if so, how. After a preliminary look at the condition of enslaved people, the focus in the early chapters turns to Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and fervent abolitionist John Brown, each of whom—in very different ways—was working to end slavery. Violence had already become endemic in Kansas, where Brown’s role in a massacre of slave owners made him known even before his raid on Harper’s Ferry. Meanwhile, the growth of the Republican Party united anti-slavery elements in the North, though its presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was quite willing to let slavery alone in the states where it was legal. But the South saw Lincoln’s election as a threat to its “peculiar institution,” and movement toward secession began as soon as the 1860 election was decided. Enter Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky, an elder statesman respected by all parties. As South Carolina declared secession, Crittenden, with many influential figures from both North and South, led a peace conference hoping to avert the coming disaster. Lincoln’s cabinet members were also working to keep things together—although not all were on the same page as the new president. In the closing chapters, Winik alternates between Fort Sumter, where the first shots would be fired, and the ultimately unsuccessful peace negotiations in Washington.
A fascinating look at some of the less familiar history in the days leading up to the Civil War.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781538735121
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
