A sturdy history of an insular people that will appeal mostly to students of early American history.
A professor of religious studies argues for reinstating the Plymouth Pilgrims at the forefront of the fight for "liberty of conscience" on American soil.
Usually relegated to the margins of academic history as the "smallest, weakest, and least important of the English colonies" compared to John Winthrop's Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, notes Turner, forged the first sense of American identity and mythology in terms of a participatory political framework and fierce commitment to liberty. But what did the concept of “liberty” mean to them? Separating from what they perceived as the corruption of the Church of England—from the "bondage" to "monarchs, magistrates, bishops, or synods"—they were determined to form their own congregations and elect their own officers. They were continually hounded for these desires, especially under the new king, James VI of Scotland, who ascended to the throne in 1603 and was unsympathetic to puritanism because he associated it with "limits on royal prerogatives." Moving to the Netherlands did not prove satisfactory in the long run. Wherever they went, notes Turner, the author of Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012), “English separatists were disunity specialists.” Making the arduous journey across the Atlantic Ocean, however, was an act of pure faith, and their “Mayflower compact” was an attempt at establishing “a civic body politic” that did not hinge on church membership. On one hand, they were able to fashion an important defense treaty with Massasoit, which benefited both the settlers and Wampanoags and established the settlers as “the foremost military power in the region.” On the other hand, church attendance was compulsory, and the colony’s leaders banished anyone who wanted to worship by other principles, such as the Quakers. Ultimately, Turner concludes, the “Colony leaders took it for granted that some groups of people were entitled to more liberties than others.” Though rather dry, the author’s study offers original scholarship that academics will appreciate.
A sturdy history of an insular people that will appeal mostly to students of early American history.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-22550-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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