A deftly rendered portrayal of the US at the turn of the century.
A sharp, wide-lens snapshot of American society 100 years ago.
"Turn-of-the-century America," a phrase newly applicable to our own time but long meaning the US around 1900, is the subject of this timely account. Kent characterizes the nation then as many would portray the US today: world power, economic markets, and the problems of diversity were its basic challenges. Although the nation's economy was "invincible," empire bred its discontents. Citizens hotly debated the day's great disparities of wealth, and many people offered self-serving justifications for the fortunes amassed by the trusts or held by too few individuals. In fact, the 1900 presidential contest was the last to challenge the influence of the corporate elite—who, with the election of William McKinley, came out on top. White Americans were in the driver's seat, and the nation's "genuine moral center could never be located." It's not surprising that this all sounds suspiciously like our own time. In fact, Kent gives the game away by asserting that "the America of 2000 first became distinctly visible a century ago." But historical arguments that find the future in the present are always dangerous; so, too, is the assumption (which Kent never argues) that history comes in 100-year chunks. If comparisons are to be useful, they must be justified. Might not a comparison of today's society with that of, say, 1917 be more illuminating? There's no way to tell from this otherwise sound, solid, readable general history of a time that had its own character and integrity—whatever that history might mean to us.
A deftly rendered portrayal of the US at the turn of the century.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7656-0595-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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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