An impressively broad scholarly history whose readability and smooth organization make it a joy to read.
A leading historian of the Enlightenment explores the widely differing philosophies that led to the American and French revolutions and their social, cultural, and ideological impacts on the world.
Key themes of all revolutions include democratic vs. aristocratic republicanism, support or rejection of universal rights, suffrage qualifications, and the place of religion in society. At the heart of most of the Atlantic Revolutions of the late 18th century and first half of the 19th century was the rivalry between moderate and radical enlightenment. The moderates sought mixed government along the British lines while the radical side demanded separation of church and state and no established monarchy or aristocracy. In this epic work of historical scholarship, Israel (Emeritus, Modern History/Institute for Advance Study, Princeton Univ.; Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre, 2014, etc.) amply explains the concepts that drive revolutions and how they are shaped by organized vanguards interpreting the general discontent and challenging the status quo. He also explores the many different intellectual forces at work: the influence of writers like Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, and Paine, and especially the almost polar differences among radical and moderate revolutionaries. Showing the significance of the French Revolution in America, Israel notes that the Reign of Terror was viewed as a horrific aberration. Meanwhile, the Jeffersonians constantly butted heads with the Hamiltonians, and while Benjamin Franklin embodied the highest values of the American Revolution in Europe, his radicalism was divisive. Due to this friction, as well as incompetent ambassadors from both France and America, it is actually surprising that the American Civil War didn’t break out much sooner. This is not just a history of the French and American revolutions, however, as the author masterfully examines Canadian involvement, the Haitian slave rebellion, the four Anglo-Dutch Wars, and fighting in the Cape Colony and well beyond to Greece, Spain, South America, and other areas.
An impressively broad scholarly history whose readability and smooth organization make it a joy to read.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-691-17660-4
Page Count: 744
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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