An engrossing and historically invaluable record of the end of Nauset Light Keeper’s House’s private ownership.
An updated edition of the diary of a fabled light station's caretaker.
Mary Daubenspeck, for years the owner of Cape Cod’s iconic Nauset Light Keeper’s House and caretaker of the Light Station, died in 2001 after having negotiated the survival of these historic landmarks and their transfer to the Cape Cod National Seashore (CCNS) and the Nauset Light Preservation Society. In these pages, her brother Tim presents both the diary that she kept from the time she and her husband purchased the Keeper’s House in 1982 until her death and the diary’s extensions that bring the story to 2024, when the Daubenspeck family left their private residence and turned over the properties to the CCNS (it’s a version of a personal journal, in other words, that includes the author’s obituary). Mary Daubenspeck shepherded her family’s home through good times and bad, including, most notably, the onslaught of the Atlantic Ocean, which led to the lighthouse being moved inland some distance in November of 1996. Through 200 pages filled with color photos of the lighthouse and the Keeper’s House, readers follow Mary Daubenspeck’s journal entries as she delights in family, deals with bureaucracy, and keeps one eye on the increasingly raucous forces of nature. In fact, several of her most enjoyable entries revolve in large part around nature, whether she’s noticing the “icy velvet black sky” at night or reflecting on the incessant pounding of the surf. Naturally, the book’s chief preoccupation (perhaps to the reader’s detriment) is the author’s obsession with passing her land on to responsible new hands. “I will make myself into anything (curator, concessioner, etc.) I have to in order to keep my house in my family’s rightful private ownership,” she writes in October of 1996. “Anything, that is, but a fool.” The author’s flinty personality memorably fills these pages.
An engrossing and historically invaluable record of the end of Nauset Light Keeper’s House’s private ownership.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9798218416430
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Keeper's House Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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