A well-researched history of the fraught path to emancipation.
A history of a group of American abolitionists who were roiled by divisiveness.
Despite having a common interest in ending slavery, the abolition movements of mid-19th-century America were hardly unified. As cultural historian Hirshman reveals, race, gender, and class issues incited deep, discomfiting conflicts. She focuses on three central figures: William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the influential newspaper The Liberator; rousing orator and activist Frederick Douglass; and socialite Maria Weston Chapman, who earned the epithet “The Contessa.” “Their alliance,” Hirshman discovered, “fueled critical years of the movement, and their breakup affected the direction of the movement profoundly.” Each was strong-willed and uncompromising: Garrison, whose initial connection to the anti-slavery cause came through his association with Boston Quakers, could be quarrelsome and moralistic. Weston Chapman, by virtue of her social status and wealth, expected to be obeyed. Douglass was an ambitious man who reveled in his celebrity and sought political influence. In the 1830s, the cause of abolition gained force. “From twelve white men in the basement of a Black church, through the efforts of workingmen and women, Black and white, and of dissenting ministers and argumentative college students,” Hirshman writes, “the tendrils of immediate abolitionism began to spread throughout the North.” Less than a decade after its founding in 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society counted some 150,000 members. The Society voiced strong opposition to its rival organization, the American Colonization Society, which proposed to return Black Americans to Africa. Even within the Anti-Slavery Society, factions clashed. Some abolitionists opposed the expansion of slavery; some wanted complete abolition throughout the nation. Some, like Garrison, held that the Constitution allowed for slaveholding; Douglass vehemently disagreed. Viewing the abolitionist movement from a unique angle, Hirshman shows how the breakdown of the alliance among the three activists was fueled in part by Douglass’ rising fame, burgeoning dissent among the nation’s political parties, and, not least, Weston Chapman’s aspersions about Douglass’ work ethic and character.
A well-researched history of the fraught path to emancipation.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-328-90024-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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