A flawed yet informative history of the early years of the Republic.
An edifying introduction to the lives of four presidents of the U.S.
On Christmas night in 1776, George Washington and his Continental Army scored a much-needed victory over Hessian mercenaries, a triumph captured by German American artist Emanuel Leutze in his 1851 painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. It depicts 12 men in Washington’s boat, including an 18-year-old lieutenant named James Monroe. This dramatic moment, suggests Cheney, foreshadowed the “Virginia Dynasty” (1789-1825), during which four of the first five presidents of the U.S. hailed from the Old Dominion. According to the author, the four men—Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Monroe—who composed the Dynasty were all “children of the Enlightenment” who valued individual rights as well as slaveholders who “sensed the coming of a great conflict” over that wicked institution and thus “feared for the Union.” Yet they were different. Washington was the prototypical leader, Jefferson and Madison the “life-long students” and wordsmiths, and Monroe the diligent type who lacked the “intellectual agility” of his two immediate predecessors in office. At times they clashed: Madison and Monroe ran against each other in a congressional election, and Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe opposed the policies of Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s first secretary of the treasury. Cheney capably shows that despite these differences and disputes, the quartet helped lead to “the creation of the American nation,” and general readers will learn plenty from the text. However, the author breaks no new ground for those already familiar with the history of her principals, and her account suffers from supposition (too many instances of the phrase “may have”; “Jefferson and Madison surely took up the topic” of their health when they roomed together; “Madison, an uncommonly serious student, might have earlier been acquainted with such ideas”) and odd repetition (“at age twenty-nine, less than three months after his arrest, [Benjamin Franklin Bache] died of yellow fever at age twenty-nine”).
A flawed yet informative history of the early years of the Republic.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-101-98004-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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