Convincing study of how alternative histories develop.
The American Century’s hidden narrative.
“The institutionalized secrecy of the modern U.S. government inspired a new type of conspiracy theories [which] proposed that the federal government itself was the conspirator,” writes Olmsted (History/Univ. of California, Davis; Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley, 2002, etc.). Interestingly, the proponents of such theories changed over time from the conservative, moneyed elite epitomized by FDR’s many enemies to a more marginalized demographic of embittered, frightened people on both the left and right. The author begins by examining how World War I swelled the federal budget and fostered an atmosphere in which dissent was equated with subversion, as demonstrated by the 1918 Palmer raids. In response, those defined as enemies of the state grew more paranoid. By the end of the ’20s, Olmsted observes, skeptics might blame the president’s inner circle or “the secret cabals of the international gold ring,” but they all agreed that shadowy, powerful interests had manipulated America into war. The shock of Pearl Harbor only amplified these tendencies among a strange consensus of anti-Semites, anti-interventionists and New Deal haters who “had long feared [an] ‘incident’ that would allow Roosevelt to drag an unwilling country into war.” In the ’50s, fears arising from the communists’ victory in China and the Soviets’ acquisition of the atom bomb were exploited by Joseph McCarthy, perhaps the most ruthless of the “official” conspiracy-mongers. With JFK’s assassination, the author argues, conspiracy theories became the province of ordinary people, who formed grassroots networks to debunk the Warren Report. She concludes by looking at anti-government paranoia of the ’90s, which produced Timothy McVeigh, and its disturbing resonance in skepticism about who really perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. Olmsted ably handles research into obscure and fringe source materials, explaining how real evidence like the top-secret intercepts of Japanese communications during WWII fed conspiracy fantasies, often over decades. Her energetic narrative shows an increasingly complex national security apparatus both prompting conspiracy theories and promulgating its own.
Convincing study of how alternative histories develop.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-19-518353-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
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
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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