A monumental project carried off to a high degree of excellence. Though it may be too lengthy for all but the most patient...
A magisterial history of the creation of the United States Constitution.
By 1787, the American union was on its last legs, bankrupt, unable to tax or to wield military or economic power, and effectively unable to reform itself. That year's Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was ostensibly intended to propose amendments to the governing Articles of Confederation. Instead, working in secret under the guidance of James Madison, the delegates quickly set out to overthrow the Articles and create a new, truly national government from scratch. The odds against the various interests represented agreeing on anything of substance were very long, and the odds against ratification of the result by 13 jealous states were longer still. In crisp, precise style, and without undue reverence for the framers or their handiwork, Klarman (Law/Harvard Univ.; From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, 2012, etc.) explores in great depth, with ample illustrative quotations, the varying proposals and the heated arguments for and against them. Particularly striking are what a blank slate the framers started from and the proposals that were rejected, including term limits for congressmen and election of the president by state legislatures. The author explains how sectional and other rivalries drove the sometimes-unexpected compromises that made an acceptable draft possible. His descriptions of the political circumstances underlying the convention are thorough and helpful in understanding the delegates' contemporary concerns. Klarman also provides a lively account of the raw political maneuvering necessary to achieve ratification by a minimum of nine states from an electorate largely hostile to the enterprise, which created a much more powerful central government than expected, subordinated the role of the states, and insulated much of it from direct popular control.
A monumental project carried off to a high degree of excellence. Though it may be too lengthy for all but the most patient general reader, constitutional scholars will find this thorough and authoritative work indispensable reading.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-19-994203-9
Page Count: 840
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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