The Mexican-American War is too little studied today. Guardino’s swift-moving, broad-ranging history is a welcome remedy.
The history of a war of expansion and empire that reverberates today in talk of border walls and deportation.
Viewed through a retrospective lens, the American invasion of Mexico in 1846, an act of single-sided aggression, has eerie parallels with later incursions in Vietnam and Iraq. For one thing, all were adventures that enjoyed public support at first but that lost backing as time wore on. It was also precipitated, writes Guardino (History/Indiana Univ.; The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750-1850, 2005, etc.) in this vigorous, readable account, by an American president who “had to hide crucial information and engage in intense partisan maneuvering to start the war.” Moreover, during the two years of conflict, Mexicans waged a fierce guerrilla war, while in response, the Americans “increasingly made civilians responsible for the activities of guerrillas” and committed terrible reprisals. The American soldiers, writes the author, “saw guerrilla warfare not as proof of Mexican nationalism but instead as proof that many Mexicans were violent and treacherous racial inferiors.” In a narrative that blends set-piece accounts of battle, profiles of individual combatants, and wide-ranging explorations of larger issues, Guardino examines the inevitability of American victory, which proved Pyrrhic. Some of our received wisdom about the conflict, he argues, does not hold up. The Mexican forces, for example, didn’t break and run at every encounter but in the main fought capably, especially the members of the volunteer militias and National Guard. Mexico, only recently independent of Spain, was defeated in the end as much by a lack of materials and funds as by force of arms. Furthermore, the author writes, the Mexican-American War preceded and in some ways produced two civil wars, one in Mexico and the other in the U.S. The Mexican war revealed how disunited the U.S. was, with sharp regional distinctions and, of course, the issue of slavery looming over the whole enterprise.
The Mexican-American War is too little studied today. Guardino’s swift-moving, broad-ranging history is a welcome remedy.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-674-97234-6
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
HISTORY | MILITARY | UNITED STATES | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
