A fascinating tale of a nation gripped and shaped by a science/health fad that resonates today.
America’s embrace of a novel brain science that shaped the young nation.
The contours and curves of the human skull can reveal the mental makeup of a person, according to the 19th-century pseudoscience known as phrenology. Stob, a professor of communication at Vanderbilt University, casts a spell with his humorous, witty storytelling and cinematic descriptions of a bygone era that is sometimes racist and foolish, yet intent on the power to improve oneself. Believers—including P.T. Barnum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Walt Whitman—also bought into the notion that science and self-measurement can be empowering. The brain has many organs, with 37 attributes that could be numerically measured, including conscientiousness, destructiveness, secretiveness, benevolence, and amativeness (sex drive). The “empire of skulls” was built by the Fowler family, who understood that flattery, combined with spectacle, made for devoted audiences. The history of phrenology encompasses ghost stories, sex scandals, gruesome pirate slayings, grave robbing, and even octagonal architecture. From the 1830s to the Civil War, phrenology was the right science at the right time for an adolescent nation that needed grounding, Stob argues. It fell out of favor by the late-19th century, with the rise of Darwinism, the scientific method, and a visit by none other than Mark Twain, whose skepticism was increasingly shared by a nation scarred by the brutalities of war. Far from a remote tidbit of history, phrenology brain maps are often referenced in popular culture, and its focus on measuring the human body in order to boost health is evident in the contemporary popularity of fitness trackers, DNA testing, high-tech scales and body scans.
A fascinating tale of a nation gripped and shaped by a science/health fad that resonates today.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781640096837
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
