An engaging history of admirable episodes from America’s past.
Historian and biographer Brookhiser (John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court, 2018, etc.), senior editor of National Review, grounds his spirited argument for American exceptionalism in the idea of liberty.
“We have been securing it, defining it, recovering it, and fighting for it for four hundred years,” writes the author. He chooses 13 public statements, written or orated from 1619 to 1987, which he believes “define America as the country that it is, different from all others.” Although acknowledging the nation’s “dark chapters” of oppression, brutality, and injustice, Brookhiser focuses on men and women who defiantly fought for liberty, offering lively biographical and historical vignettes that set the stage for each of the documents he examines. These include the minutes of the Jamestown General Assembly, which provided that decision-making in the colony would be by vote; the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, a statement of grievance sent to Peter Stuyvesant—“a martinet and a bigot”—to insist on religious freedom; the narrative of the trial of John Peter Zenger, which allowed the press in Colonial America to flourish; the Declaration of Independence and, later, the Constitution; the Gettysburg Address; the Monroe Doctrine, which warned “corrupt, oppressive systems” to stay away from America; and the Declaration of Sentiments formulated by suffragists at Seneca Falls. The author also looks at some lesser known protestations for liberty: the constitution devised by the New-York Manumission Society, a group of “oddball Quakers and Manhattan elitists,” to confront “the injustice done to those among us who are held as slaves” and help them to share in “civil and religious liberty”; Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus”; William Jennings Bryan’s "Cross of Gold" speech; Franklin Roosevelt’s 16th fireside chat, of 1940, which underscored America as “the arsenal of democracy”; and Ronald Reagan’s exhortation to tear down the Berlin Wall. Without liberty, Brookhiser concludes, we can be nothing but “a bigger Canada or an efficient Mexico.”
An engaging history of admirable episodes from America’s past.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-54-169913-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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