A welcome corrective to the long-skewed male-centric history of westward expansion.
Wide-ranging survey of the multifaceted roles of women in the 19th-century settlement of the American West.
English historical novelist and travel writer Hickman combines those interests in this effort to correct the view that the frontier West was the sole domain of men. The story is less about gunfighters and lone prospectors than “one of the largest and most tumultuous mass migrations in history,” and women were there from the first. Among them, as early as 1836, were Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding, two missionaries who crossed the plains and mountains to Oregon, scouting a trail that their husbands would later follow. Known largely only to specialist historians, Whitman and Spalding were the first White women to witness one of the great Native American trade rendezvous, made up of thousands of people, including friendly women who, recognizing their achievement, wrote Spalding, “were not satisfied short of saluting Mrs. W. and myself with a kiss.” Another traveler was fortunate to have lived to tell the tale, exalting in the splendors of California’s Napa Valley after surviving the unfortunate Donner Party disaster. Hickman writes sensitively of Olive Oatman, a woman in a wagon party ambushed by Native warriors in Arizona and held in captivity for years, noting the unpleasantly prurient nickname poor Olive bore during that time. (Suffice it to say that it relates to Mohave women’s reaction at first seeing bearded White men, laughing because “the beards made the men look like talking vaginas.”) The author also illuminatingly profiles the larger-than-life Sarah Bowman, “Army camp follower, entrepreneur, cook, innkeeper, and battlefield heroine” and leader of “a thriving business as the madam of the local brothel”; and Hiram and Matilda Young, a Black couple whose wagon business, in the single year 1860, “produced three hundred wagons and six thousand ox yokes.”
A welcome corrective to the long-skewed male-centric history of westward expansion.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-954118-17-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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