by Judah Ryan Cooper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2017
A frequently entertaining but equally implausible historical study.
A work of scholarly revisionism that attempts to make the case that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was a serial killer.
Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the author of the Declaration of Independence, is generally considered to be of the greatest Americans in history. However, debut author Cooper contends that he was not only a morally dubious character, but also a likely serial murderer. The author compiles a list of people who died under mysterious circumstances or were clearly murdered, who were also in close proximity to Jefferson, and whom Jefferson had significant motive to kill. His principal incentive, Cooper asserts, was the aggrandizement of his inheritance—in some cases, his massive storehouse of books, which would later be donated to the Library of Congress. Jefferson also sometimes killed people out of simple acrimony, Cooper says, such as the journalist James Thomson Callender; three editors of the Virginia Gazette; and John Robinson, a prominent Virginia politician. (In the last case, the author argues that Jefferson even secretly penned his obituary.) Cooper aims to settle other mysteries as well, such as what Jefferson was up to in the second half of 1766, a period that’s all but undocumented. Ultimately, Cooper claims that Jefferson was never considered a suspect due to his fame. Overall, the author offers a thesis that is tantalizingly original, and he combs through a mountain of available documentary evidence with forensic zeal. However, despite his impressively dogged efforts, Cooper’s case remains a thoroughly circumstantial one, and as a result, it’s far from persuasive. Also, the study concludes with a series of appendices, and some of these appear to be entirely unrelated to the author’s principal argument, including a transcript of President Donald Trump’s remarks about a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
A frequently entertaining but equally implausible historical study.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5497-7679-3
Page Count: 287
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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