Salutary portraits in radicalism.
A gallery of historical troublemakers starting with Hannibal and ending with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fleischer chooses figures who worked, with high visibility but varying levels of success, to overthrow governments, liberate countries from foreign rule or fight for the rights of the oppressed. He arranges his entries by birth date, opens each with an old or period image and spins out career portraits in an occasionally breezy idiom: Julius Caesar’s heir Octavian was “ticked off,” Guy Fawkes was a man “jonesing to fight” Protestantism, and Elizabeth Cady and Henry Stanton were “an activist power couple.” Snarky picture captions (“Emma Goldman is not interested in your nonsense”) and sidebar references to pop culture further lighten the overall tone. Still, the author does not soft-pedal the brutality to which some of his subjects turned, however idealistic they may have started out, or the violent ends to which many of them came. Though the cast is largely European and/or male, it includes such less-well-known male freedom fighters as Metacom (aka King Philip), Maori leader Hone Heke and Daniel Shays and such women as Boudica and New Zealand feminist Kate Sheppard. Suggestions for further reading, a discussion guide and relevant updates will be available online; alas, there are no bibliography or source notes as such, nor is there an index.
Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-936976-74-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Zest Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Trailing the stampede of Lincoln-bicentennial studies, this profile of “the clan that might have become America’s royal family but instead became America’s cursed family” offers both a wagonload of fascinating period photos and a case study in domestic tragedy and dysfunction. Leading Lincoln scholar Holzer portrays his presidential paterfamilias as an absentee saint—away on business for much of his four sons’ formative years but ever loving and gentle with his notably histrionic wife and an indulgent pushover who let his lads run hog wild. Conversely, though devastated by 3-year-old Eddie’s death in 1850 and 11-year-old Willie’s in 1862, his relations with Robert (the eldest and the only child to live past his teens, presented here as thoroughly unlikable) were distant at best. If the author sometimes hobbles his narrative with fussy details, he also tucks in such intimate touches as samples of homely verse from both parents and children and finishes off with quick looks at all of the direct descendants. A natural companion for Candace Fleming’s fine The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary (2008). (endnotes, adult-level bibliography) (Biography. 11-14)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59078-303-0
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent and stirring, this very readable book focuses on the Jim Crow era, that period between 1896 and 1954, a shameful time in U.S. history framed by two landmark Supreme Court cases.
From the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court sanctioned “separate but equal,” until Brown v. Board of Education, a case that found school segregation unconstitutional, African-Americans, even post-slavery, were subjected to injustice, brutality, humiliation and discrimination in education, housing, employment and government and military service. Osborne expertly guides readers through this painful, turbulent time of segregation, enabling them to understand fully the victims’ struggles and triumphs as they worked courageously to set things right. The seamless narrative benefits from handsome design: Accompanying the author’s excellent text, which is illuminated by many quotes, are superb contemporary photos, set into the text, scrapbook-style, and other primary-source documents from the archives of the Library of Congress. The visuals and captions add much to readers’ comprehension of the period, the difficulties African-Americans endured and their hard-won victories. Readers will come away moved, saddened, troubled by this stain on their country’s past and filled with abiding respect for those who fought and overcame. (timeline, notes, bibliography, note on sources) (Nonfiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0020-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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