An intelligent and imaginative historical essay with a few pieces missing.
A history of one year in the United States.
In 1831 the republic was going through a rather difficult adolescence. A remnant of the old guard of founders and framers watched as a new generation of leaders took charge of the nation (and took aim at each other). Even as the country expanded and thrived under technological advances in transport and agriculture, cracks in the democratic ideal kept surfacing, widening into fissures that threatened to dissolve the Union. Nat Turner’s quixotic rebellion and the publication of the first issue of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator raised the problem of slavery to a new level of public consciousness; the expulsion of the Cherokee from Georgia and the defeat of Black Hawk and the Sauk in Illinois belied the democratic system’s claim to fairness and benevolence; the Jackson administration was riven by the issue of states’ rights; and new evangelical sects emphasizing the moral will of the individual over divine directives (and new labor movements stressing the tensions between the powerful elite and the worker) undermined habits and ideas on which the national identity had appeared to depend. Visiting observers from the Old World (de Tocqueville, Frances Trollope) were fascinated, appalled, and bemused by what they saw. Eschewing a fully expounded argument, Masur (History/CUNY) arranges his slices of historical narrative thematically, the better to illustrate the moral, political, economic, and cultural forces at work in the moment. For the most part the strategy works, but some topics need more background explanation (the connection between the policy issues that divided the Jackson administration and the private scandal that prompted so many resignations from his cabinet is not clear), while others are sometimes forced into juxtapositions that don’t really make sense (from Audubon’s vision to the cholera epidemic). Despite the aptness of his idea and the economy of his style, the author has bitten off just a little more than his 200 pages can chew.
An intelligent and imaginative historical essay with a few pieces missing.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8090-4118-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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