In the tradition of William Bennett comes this well-written, argument-provoking compendium of American virtues. McElroy, a professor of English at the University of Arizona, spent the late 1960s teaching courses in American studies at the University of Salamanca in Spain, where, he writes, “I had to think seriously and systematically for the first time in my life about what we mean when we refer to culture, why different cultures have formed, and how the culture of the United States differs from other cultures in the Americas and Europe.” His book takes a sometimes lecture-like, but certainly accessible air as he examines these matters in turn, beginning with the sensible observation that “a historical culture can be formally defined as a unique set of extremely simple beliefs,” such as, in the case of the prewar Japanese, the notion that the emperor was a god or, in the case of revolutionary-era Americans, that all men are created equal. The simplicity of those beliefs, McElroy writes, means that it’s easy to transmit them from one generation to another and to assimilate them. McElroy’s catalog of what those beliefs are, exactly, comes from sources from Poor Richard’s Almanack on down, and they are largely unobjectionable: “Manual work is respectable.” “Freedom of movement is needed for success.” “Helping others helps yourself.” “Every individual’s success improves society.” McElroy, an evident conservative, has no truck with Karl Marx’s formulation that the dominant ideas in a society are those of the ruling class; in his view, which will likely be dismissed by those of leftward leanings, these ideas are what makes Americans American. He closes with a lament against “the simultaneous weakening of so many American beliefs” in the face of what he calls “uncompromising ideologies”—meaning, one supposes, liberalism and its kin. Call it, well, a book of rules for nonradicals. (maps)
Pub Date: April 2, 1999
ISBN: 1-56663-231-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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 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
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 2024 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.
bookshelf
