Next book

WAR ON THE BORDER

VILLA, PERSHING, THE TEXAS RANGERS, AND AN AMERICAN INVASION

A riveting account of a dynamic period featuring larger-than-life characters and plenty of drama and suspense.

A tightly focused history of the relations between the U.S. and Mexico in the early 20th century.

Guinn, a Texas-based author of books about the O.K. Corral, Bonnie and Clyde, and other relevant topics, begins on March 8, 1916, as Pancho Villa prepares to attack Columbus, New Mexico, a border town with a small military base. The author then steps back to give a cogent analysis of the broader context on both sides of the border. Since 1825, when American officials first recognized the Mexican republic, the U.S. had been the dominant partner in the relationship, annexing large swaths of territory. An editorial in the New York Herald in 1845 noted that Mexico should “learn to love her ravishers.” While Americans treated Mexicans living in the U.S. no better than African Americans, they saw Mexico itself as a profitable site for investments, especially under Porfirio Díaz, who served as Mexico’s president from 1877 to 1880 and 1884 to 1911. In 1910, Francisco Madero ran against Díaz, promising to end the country’s severe wealth inequality, only to end up in jail. Madero escaped to the U.S. and began a revolution. He was shortly joined by the then-unknown Villa, “whose background was questionable but whose fighting skills were exceptional.” Villa quickly became an important player in the wildly fluctuating political environment. His raids into the U.S. and on American interests in Mexico led to reprisals, especially the “Punitive Expedition” of 1916 led by Gen. John J. Pershing. All this was complicated by German attempts to keep the U.S. occupied on its southern border to keep it out of World War I, then raging in Europe. As he demonstrated in previous books, Guinn is an engaging storyteller, and he presents an impressively clear narrative of a significant piece of border history.

A riveting account of a dynamic period featuring larger-than-life characters and plenty of drama and suspense.

Pub Date: May 18, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-982128-86-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 18


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller


  • National Book Award Finalist

Next book

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 18


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller


  • National Book Award Finalist

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 Yorker staff 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

Next book

TOMBSTONE

THE EARP BROTHERS, DOC HOLLIDAY, AND THE VENDETTA RIDE FROM HELL

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

Close Quickview