Though informative, this book is in need of tighter structure and a more focused narrative to deliver on its intriguing...
From debut author VanDuren, an examination of how the evolution of Dutch law and government influenced the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.
The region of what is now the Netherlands has been a crossroads of commerce and conflict since before Roman times. Citizens’ survival required evolution of often novel forms of law and governance to take into account the interests of world traders as well as defense from regional despots. Using stories of pivotal individuals within this process, VanDuren reviews the creation of these layers of law that eventually inspired the framers of the U.S. Constitution. For instance, Frankish Queen Balthild’s reforms to land ownership in the seventh century led to Philips van Leyden’s 14th-century demand that rulers respect public interest. Mary of Burgundy’s list of the rights of a free people in the 1477 document “The Great Privilege” formed the foundation of John Barneveld’s engineering the Dutch Republic’s independence from Spain a century later. After a discussion of Dutch influence on the Pilgrims of Massachusetts Bay Colony and the relationships of the English and Dutch colonies in America with their home nations and corporate owners, the book climaxes with the ascendancy of William III of Orange to the throne of England and how his 1689 English Bill of Rights converted Britain into a constitutional monarchy. A fictionalized version of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia ties all these threads together. First-time author VanDuren delivers impressive research on individuals whose ideas guided the drafters of the Constitution. Yet the breezy style and rambling narrative work against him. He devotes much space to personal lives—such as Barneveld’s time in prison or Mary’s complicated marital saga—but doesn’t give similarly detailed attention to the broader political context. Similarly, discussion of the legal significance of their actions is frequently rushed. As a result, crucial legal concepts remain unclear and undeveloped. The lengthy, imagined scenarios for certain events are entertaining but contribute little.
Though informative, this book is in need of tighter structure and a more focused narrative to deliver on its intriguing premise.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Northampton House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2015
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 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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