Next book

PATRIOTS IN DISGUISE

WOMEN WARRIORS OF THE CIVIL WAR

A hearty, if indifferently written, celebration of women's courage under fire during the Civil War. According to Hall (a Maryland-based Civil War enthusiast), the role of women on both sides of the war may have been much greater than generally recognized. Women's services as nurses have long been acclaimed, but Hall has come across many instances in which women cut their hair, put aside their dresses, and passed themselves off as male soldiers as well. With the distinction between camp and battlefield often blurred, and in the din and confusion of combat, women could slip easily into roles as nurse, ``daughter of the regiment'' (an ornamental leader of parades in camp and all-purpose battlefield assistant), spy, and soldier. These ``half-soldier heroines'' risked detection of their camouflage, separation from male loved ones, ill health, and death in serving their causes. Among the women warriors singled out by Hall are Sarah Emma Edmonds (``Private Franklin Thompson''), who served as an orderly and spy for the North when not nursing solders; Loreta Janeta Valazquez, who fought for the South as ``Lieutenant Harry Buford'' at the first Battle of Bull Run before becoming a spy and gunrunner; and the Irish-born Jennie Hodgers, who, disguised as ``Albert Cashier,'' served three years with the 95th Infantry Regiment—and who kept her secret until it was exposed upon her commitment to an old-age home. Hall has uncovered many useful memoirs, diaries, letters, military records, and newspaper articles confirming the validity of these women's once sharply disputed exploits. Yet, while quoting extensively from original sources, he seldom brings his own style or point of view into play; nor does he adequately analyze the conditions that enabled these women to pass undetected for so long. Intriguing anecdotes of a little-known chapter of the Civil War, undermined by superficial treatment. (B&w photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993

ISBN: 1-55778-438-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 17


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller


  • National Book Award Finalist

Next book

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 17


Our Verdict

  • 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

Next book

NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

Close Quickview