A scholarly, engaging analysis of a specialized area of legal history.
A meticulously researched assessment of the evolution of labor law in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In this debut history book, Kahana argues that an evolving American understanding of labor relations was the driving force behind 19th-century labor legislation, rather than centuries of English common law. He reviews the existing scholarship on the topic, first looking at the centrality of the law in the Colonies and newly independent United States and then moving into an analysis of labor law as a form of American exceptionalism: “Emphasizing the virtues of a homegrown system of laws, rather than foreign justice, was not mere chauvinism. It reflected a widespread belief that public liberty could best be secured by an acquaintance with America’s unique situation.” The book goes on to explore the nature of the master-servant relationship in English law and the shift away from such terminology in the United States. While Kahana relies on legal commentaries to develop his argument, he finds much of the evidence to support it in records of how the law was actually practiced. He focuses largely on Judge Lemuel Shaw, who issued several noteworthy labor-related decisions during his term as the chief justice of Massachusetts in the mid-1800s: “He stands out as a symbolic figure whose legal ideas were so favorably received because they both mirrored and gave cogent form to often inchoate values that were present in the larger society,” Kahana explains. By leading readers through Shaw’s decisions and their legal contexts, the author makes a credible argument for Shaw’s historical importance and for the validity of his own primary thesis. Despite the author’s narrow focus and extensive footnotes, he offers clear prose and coherent arguments, which never expect readers to have a thorough knowledge of early American government. As a result, this book is likely to be accessible to a general audience.
A scholarly, engaging analysis of a specialized area of legal history.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59332-580-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Lfb Scholarly Pub LLC
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 2025 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.
