A welcome contribution to the literature of slavery, the Civil War, and American immigration.
Historical examination of a dilemma facing 19th-century Jewish immigrants to the U.S.: Did assimilation require supporting slavery?
As Kreitner observes in opening, many Jews in both the North and the South supported slavery as biblically endorsed, with one New York rabbi asking abolitionists, “Does it not strike you that you are guilty of something very little short of blasphemy?” It did not help that many abolitionists were also fervent evangelists who sought to convert as well as liberate, some of whom “called for altering the Constitution to make America an officially Christian nation.” Kreitner follows the lives of six representative figures, three of them rabbis. Of them, one was opposed to abolition, one wanted Jews to stay out of the argument for their own security, and one was wholeheartedly opposed to slavery. Adding to these are three secular Jews, not especially religious, who took different paths: one a veteran of the European revolutions who came to America in 1848 and fought with John Brown in Bloody Kansas; a socialist named Ernestine Rose, who combined her opposition to slavery with a strong denunciation of “women’s subjugation”; and, best known of all, Judah Benjamin, the slave-owning Louisiana senator who became the most powerful member of Jefferson Davis’ cabinet but who, Kreitner notes, is also “conspicuously absent from the Lost Cause pantheon.” Though it is difficult to generalize from so small a sample, Kreitner makes clear that each was sincere in his or her beliefs: The antislavery rabbi David Einhorn, for instance, held that “Jews fortunate enough to have found refuge in the United States should work to make it better, for everyone,” while Benjamin sought to protect his financial interests even as he recognized that sooner or later the South would have to abandon slavery—and who wisely fled the country at the Civil War’s end.
A welcome contribution to the literature of slavery, the Civil War, and American immigration.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780374608453
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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