by Michael Justin Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2014
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A pair of remarkable youngsters—one disguising his age, the other disguising her sex and age—participates in significant battles of the American Revolution and meets many of the chief architects of the American Experiment.
Filled with action, glory and patriotism, Lee’s (Heroes of American Prosperity, 2014, etc.) YA novel features 13-year-old twins Alexander and Amanda Lee, born and raised on a farm in Virginia. Amanda is outgoing and self-assured, while Alexander is more reserved. Both yearn for adventure and an escape from the drudgery of farm life. After Alexander joins Washington’s Continental Army, Amanda schemes her way into the South Carolina militia by making an extended visit to her aunt Selah in Charleston. Both twins are expert marksmen and speak multiple languages. Amanda learns how to fight like a Cherokee from Francis Marion and how to ride and fight on horseback, from Casimir Pulaski; she also serves directly under John Paul Jones, meets Franklin in France and is in the forefront of the charge at Yorktown, Virginia. For his part, Alexander crosses the Delaware with Washington, is the chief negotiator for Anthony Wayne when unpaid troops threaten to desert, serves as translator for Valley Forge drillmaster Wilhelm von Steuben and is also a key figure at the battle of Yorktown. Both teens are fearless warriors. Brimming with excitement while effectively teaching history and some of the reasons and strategies behind the Revolution, this book will undoubtedly appeal to young readers. Lee has a real talent for capturing the young mind and conveying complex ideas in terms young readers will understand. Though the superhero youngsters are well-portrayed, a simplistic, childlike and often over-the-top outlook pervades the narrative, particularly with regard to war: “It would be a lovely battle at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.”
Swashbuckling tales for young readers that could bring smiles for older readers, too.
Pub Date: June 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500249694
Page Count: 150
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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