by Richard D. Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 2017
A valuable contribution to the history of the early republic and to the scholarly literature of civil rights.
In actual practice, it has been far from self-evident in America that all men—all people—are created equal.
It should come as no surprise to historically minded readers that civil rights have not been a given in the United States: first there was the matter of slavery, then the lack of suffrage for women, and then a legacy of oppression of minorities of various descriptions. Some of this ongoing struggle, suggests Brown (Emeritus, History/Univ. of Connecticut; The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870, 1996, etc.), can be charted to the various constitutions and statutes at play in a complex negotiation of states’ rights and also to the fact that throughout history, “the ways Americans thought and acted regarding race and rights could be ambiguous and fluid.” The Enlightenment ideal of natural equality, of those self-evident truths and inalienable rights, did not always meet well with ground-tested reality in a land of propertied insiders and disenfranchised outsiders: Native Americans, enslaved and free blacks, women. As Brown charts it, some of the first stirrings of the idea of equality played out on the field of religion, as British anti-Catholicism gave way to religious freedom. “Revolutionary leaders,” writes the author, “recognized that if they grasped religious privilege too tightly they might doom their cause.” Even if this tolerance had an expedient function—those leaders hoped to win over French Catholic Canada to their cause—it opened the door to decades of contested ideologies concerning race and what was bound up in it, from ideas of the “aristocracy of color” to arguments over property rights, including human property. Brown’s narrative is densely researched but lucidly written, and it contains many revealing asides that by themselves would be oddments—the note, for instance, that in the revolutionary era, infanticide was “the sole crime for which more white women suffered death than women of color.”
A valuable contribution to the history of the early republic and to the scholarly literature of civil rights.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-300-19711-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Share your opinion of this book
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
17
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.