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THE SACRED FIRE OF LIBERTY

JAMES MADISON AND THE FOUNDING OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC

Banning (History/Univ. of Kentucky; Jefferson and Madison: Three Conversations from the Founding, 1995, etc.) offers a dry-as- dust intellectual history of James Madison's evolution from ardent Federalist to partisan opponent of the Washington administration. Banning starts with the riddle that has puzzled Madison biographers through the years: How could the ``father of the Constitution,'' coauthor of The Federalist, and draftsman of the Bill of Rights, who started his public life by favoring strong central government and extensive protection against majority oppression, have become the leader of an ideologically populist party? Banning argues that while Madison's thought evolved with changing circumstances, his Federalism and his defense of democracy and local interests were more consistent than is generally thought. In Madison's view, the author asserts, the democratic and revolutionary promise of the Declaration of Independence and the pragmatic checks and balances of the Constitution were both parts of the legacy of the American Revolution. Madison came to Congress in 1780, when the Articles of Confederation were brand-new and the outcome of the Revolution in doubt. He became convinced that the Confederation government was weak and that this weakness was endangering the Revolution. Although many viewed the Constitution's provision for a strong central government and use of checks and balances to restrain the excesses of the popularly elected legislature as compromises of the democratic ideals of the Revolution, Banning demonstrates that Madison viewed them as protections of personal liberty. However, once the Constitution was ratified, Madison became an advocate of liberty in another senseas democracy. By 1792, he was a national leader of the Democratic- Republican party, and his ideological orientation was set for the rest of his public life. Hobbled by a sometimes turgid prose style, Banning's discussion of Madison's ideas never sufficiently renders him a flesh-and-blood person.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-8014-3152-2

Page Count: 536

Publisher: Cornell Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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