A clearly written, interesting history in need of a sharper focus and stronger structure.
Through his examination of one Southern town, Swanson discusses labor and racial issues that affected the American South during the period between Reconstruction and the ’60s.
The straightforward, chronological narrative opens with Confederate president Jefferson Davis seeking to escape Gen. Sherman’s army and fleeing to Danville, Va., which he briefly makes the capital of the seceded states. The South fell soon after Davis’ arrival in Danville, and the town continued to be a hotly contested region for much of its history. The first chapter explains the events leading up to the Danville Riot, in which racial tensions exploded into gunfire in the streets. Swanson relates this fascinating topic with a nonjudgmental eye—his coldly neutral examination of Southern race relations seems, if not supportive of white supremacy, at least noncommittal. This tone continues for the rest of the work, which follows the rise of the textile industry and attempts to unionize factory workers, many of whom had moved to Danville after their farms had failed. While Swanson writes competently and chose a fascinating, little-known facet of Southern history, the book lacks a central theme. There are compelling character sketches, articles and transcripts but no internal structure to tie them together. The book provides an interesting look at one Southern town, but only occasionally provides a broader view of its connection to the South or the nation as a whole, and vice versa. The work also feels simultaneously too broad and too narrow—Swanson intends to cover the history of Danville, but he ultimately focuses on the impact of the textile industry, leaving the reader to wonder about other aspects of the town’s past that are only briefly touched upon.
A clearly written, interesting history in need of a sharper focus and stronger structure.Pub Date: March 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-1449988050
Page Count: 219
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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