Hugely entertaining popular history.
The president and editor in chief of Congressional Quarterly offers a lively biography of perhaps the most consequential one-term president in American history.
By 1844 Andrew Jackson’s protégé, James K. Polk, had compiled a distinguished House career that saw him rise to the office of Speaker. After serving as Tennessee’s governor and then losing two re-election bids, the ferociously ambitious “Young Hickory” angled for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. He hitched his wagon to the resurgent Martin Van Buren, whose opposition to the annexation of Texas disappointed Jackson and created an opening for Polk to emerge with the presidential nomination, the first truly dark-horse candidate in American history. After narrowly defeating Henry Clay and pledging to serve only one term, Polk set his disciplined mind and political skills to cementing the Texas annexation, reducing the tariff and creating an “independent treasury,” settling the dispute with Britain over the Oregon Territory and fomenting a war with Mexico that, to him, appeared necessary to acquire land that positioned America to dominate the continent. Though he lacked the charisma and leadership skills of his mentor, Polk achieved every one of these goals, but his stealthy maneuvering and self-righteousness inspired no love or loyalty. He left office with his party hopelessly split and the nation transformed in a manner that only heightened philosophical and regional differences that led later to civil war. Merry (Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition, 2005, etc.) skillfully places Polk within the era’s political firmament, and he ably assesses his complex character and chronicles his contentious relations with a variety of players, especially the conniving Secretary of State James Buchanan and the egregiously vain Gen. Winfield Scott. Polk fully embraced the country’s expansionist impulse, never questioning the sometimes dubious means he employed to advance what he saw as America’s destiny. The nation, in Emerson’s phrase, “of vast designs and expectations” moved quickly to the 1848 election, and the exhausted Polk died four months later.
Hugely entertaining popular history.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9743-1
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
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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