An essential text that establishes the facts, tells the stories, identifies the heroes and villains, explodes the...
A splendid synthesis by Kentuckian Drake (History/Berea Coll.), who has devoted his career to the study of Appalachia.
In the author’s definition, “Appalachia” comprises territory from New York to Alabama. He begins this swift, sweeping study not with the geological story (a questionable omission), but with the history of the earliest humans—Indians who lived in what is now northern Alabama about 8,000 years ago. (Earlier Indian groups had hunted in the region but did not remain.) Drake then considers the Europeans immigrants and identifies among them a mentality that remains today—what he calls a “yeomanesque aspiration for land.” The first Europeans to arrive (circa 1650) were the fur traders, followed by a major influx of Scotch-Irish (about 250,000 of them between 1715 and the American Revolution) and a sizeable number of Germans. Drake then explores the effects of war on the region. He examines the harsh treatment of Indians, especially the notorious relocation of the Cherokee in 1838–39 (the shameful “Trail of Tears” from Tennessee to Oklahoma resulted in the deaths of some 5,000 Cherokees). Drake traces the roots of the deep divisions in the region between those with money and power and those without, and he maintains a reasonable balance between passionate advocacy and dispassionate scholarship in his analysis of the effects on the region of the coal, chemical, and hydroelectric power industries. Along the way, he discusses people and policies long associated with Appalachia—from Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett to the Tennessee Valley Authority to the War on Poverty. He shines some light on the little known regional histories of African-Americans (sometimes called “Afrilachian”) and of the “Melungeons” (a mysterious multi-racial people whose full story remains to be told). He also briefly surveys the development of literature, art, and music in the region.
An essential text that establishes the facts, tells the stories, identifies the heroes and villains, explodes the stereotypes, and demystifies and celebrates the region. (16 pp. b&w photos; 8 maps)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8131-2169-8
Page Count: 306
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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