A capable history that foresees a hard fight yet to come in the war for reproductive freedom.
A richly detailed account of the long struggle for women’s right to choose.
Health journalist Grant notes that every state in the U.S. had enacted criminal abortion laws by 1880, and “for the next one hundred years, abortion in America remained…underground, secret, stigmatized, and dangerous.” From the moment that Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, anti-abortion activists organized to overturn it, helped along by politicians in gerrymandered districts who used “majorities and supermajorities to pass abortion restrictions at an alarming pace and volume.” On the other side, Grant writes, activist groups have long organized to protect choice. In the wake of Dobbs, the battle for access to abortion has heated up—often illegally, in the case of states such as Texas that have banned the importation of abortion pills or travel to other states to obtain the medical procedure. Grant profiles activists at various stages of the battle, from first-generation feminists who linked access to abortion to the struggle for women’s liberation generally to modern-day advocates who, among other strategies, have internationalized the ability to obtain pills for “self-managed abortion,” creating a sort of “underground for the post-Dobbs world.” The battle is multifaceted and requires the commitment of a range of activists and allies—who, Grant allows, are sometimes given to fighting among themselves—especially as certain states enact more restrictive laws even to the point of bans. On which note, Grant writes, “Abortion bans have never and will never stop people from ending pregnancies; what they do is force people to resort to unsafe methods to end them.” Her narrative makes clear that the battle for access continues apace to advance the cause for choice against “the notion that a government can dictate if, when, or how its citizens manage pregnancy.”
A capable history that foresees a hard fight yet to come in the war for reproductive freedom.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9781668053249
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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