by Myron Magnet ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2013
Mildly quirky but well-argued. It’s not controversial that American revolutionaries sought only liberty, not equality or...
Why did the American Revolution turn out so well?
Across the world and throughout history—from France to Russia to China and elsewhere—revolutions have usually descended into tyranny and bloodshed, but America has enjoyed stability, freedom and prosperity. Historian and City Journal editor Magnet (Dickens and the Social Order, 2004, etc.) delivers the answer in this collection of biographies of our Founding Fathers, describing their ideas as well as—for no clear reason—their homes. The usual immortals—Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison—take up most of the text. Readers may puzzle over the absence of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and the inclusion of second-level figures such as William Livingston, John Jay and the Lees of Virginia, but it is this selection, rather than their straightforward biographies, that supports the author’s argument. Historians agree that America’s founders aimed to restore what they viewed as traditional British freedoms being trampled by George III and his administration. Magnet stresses that eschewing abstract theories and sticking to narrow political goals ensured their success, adding that subsequent revolutions in other nations aiming to create a new social and economic order ended badly. Readers will now understand the absence of Adams and Franklin. All of the author’s founders belonged to the upper-class elite—or, in Hamilton’s case, identified with it—so social revolution held no attraction. Since America was more prosperous than even Britain and lacked an underclass, pressure for an economic revolution was low.
Mildly quirky but well-argued. It’s not controversial that American revolutionaries sought only liberty, not equality or fraternity, and Magnet is happy to point that out.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-393-24021-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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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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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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