An intriguing portrait of a religious figure’s role in shaping public opinion.
A biography of a little-known cleric who defended Union interests in Britain during the Civil War.
In this debut, Smith introduces readers to Charles McIlvaine, an Episcopalian minister who spent most of his career as a Cincinnati-based bishop. McIlvaine developed strong relationships with religious and secular leaders in England during several visits to the country in the 1840s and ’50s, which put him in a position to advocate for the United States when British sympathies were largely with the Confederate States of America. Although Smith acknowledges that McIlvaine’s role was a small one in the context of the Civil War, he makes a convincing case for the importance of the man’s persuasive powers and of his useful relationships with powerful figures, including the Prince of Wales. The author draws on McIlvaine’s copious letters and published writings, as well as those of other noteworthy figures, to produce a biography that’s thoroughly substantiated by the historical record. The profusion of source material allows Smith to explore McIlvaine’s role in denominational fights over slavery and the evolution of his understanding of African-Americans, from advocating colonization of freed slaves to eventually presiding over integrated church services. It also illustrates his part in shaping evangelical thought about slavery and the war. Overall, Smith shows an evident mastery of McIlvaine’s story. However, the prose in which he tells it can sometimes be grating. Mid-paragraph changes of topic are jarring (“He advised McIlvaine to give up memorization and develop an extempore style based on prepared ideas. Regarding slavery, the parish records did not distinguish slaveholders among the communicants”) and excessive use of euphemisms, such as “the Queen City” for Cincinnati and “the Ohioan” for McIlvaine, are cloying. However, these stylistic concerns don’t outweigh the value of the information or of Smith’s persuasive analysis of his subject—a man who played a minor but important part in 19th-century international relations.
An intriguing portrait of a religious figure’s role in shaping public opinion.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4797-0290-9
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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