An uneven book about America’s black community that offers provocative ideas.
An author details his search for leadership and his plan to address the continuing effects of slavery.
In this work, Shelton (America’s Little Black Book, 2015, etc.) intends to follow the orders of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and “engage the economic battleground.” In order to do so, the author forms the “foundation-corporation” American Slaves Inc. to spread awareness of his beliefs. He feels it is necessary for the descendants of slaves to reconnect with the roots of the horrific institution: commercial gain. He wants this group, a population he refers to as “American slaves,” to acknowledge that they are a newly bred race who must work together to address the continuing inequality that is a legacy of slavery. Shelton’s main purpose is to encourage these “American slaves” to embrace economic development as a core cultural principle. He emphasizes the need for improved leadership in the black community and increased outreach and assistance from white individuals. The book also serves to document Shelton’s attempts to see his plan reach fruition; it chronicles his various meetings and attempted interactions with black leaders, his decision to run for political office, and his struggles to spread his message nationwide and internationally. Shelton has admirable aims in this book and his concern for his community is clear. But he consistently expresses astonishment when government officials or black leaders are uncomfortable with adopting the term “American slave.” The text also swings confusingly among philosophical discussions, recollections of Shelton’s efforts to confer with black leaders, and descriptions of the author’s other volumes. There are even endorsements for both the current book and Shelton’s previous work shoehorned within the narrative of his steps to gain attention for American Slaves Inc. The largest flaw of the text is that the author uses many pages to dwell on old grudges and flawed leadership. He ruminates on black community leaders and educators who spurned his ideas or who he feels have failed the “American slave” population, and unfortunate incidents with federal figures, such as the time President George W. Bush declined to serve on the board of his organization. This distracts from Shelton’s larger goal, moving his focus from the cultural ramifications of slavery to the personal slights he feels he has endured.
An uneven book about America’s black community that offers provocative ideas.Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: American Slaves, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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