Impeccably researched but likely too dense for general readers.
A distinguished Princeton social sciences professor studies the fraught intersection of race, religion and ethnicity in Texas since Reconstruction.
Long considered the “buckle” of the Bible Belt, Texas has a history that is unique but that also speaks to the religious, racial and political dynamics “that have decidedly shaped America.” In this brilliantly detailed book, Wuthnow (Red State Religion: Faith and Politics in America's Heartland, 2011, etc.) draws on newspapers, eyewitness accounts and archival material as well as sociological theory, showing how notions of self and other emerged through institution-building practices that helped define Texan (and ultimately, national) identity. In the beginning, the Texas frontier challenged settlers with “droughts, floods, weather-borne illnesses” and hostile natives. To survive, frontiersmen erected churches and schools that were themselves built on narratives that featured “heroes and villains about whom stories [could be] told and who serve[d] as positive or negative role models for future generations.” But these predominantly white organizations were impacted by complex, often contradictory attitudes toward race (a legacy of slavery), ethnicity (a legacy of Mexican domination) and, later, gender and sexual orientation. The Christian fundamentalism that emerged in the 1920s revealed the essentially conservative nature of religion and culture in Texas. Forty years later, it also became a major political force that helped determine the outcome of presidential elections and played major roles in debates on abortion and same-sex marriage. By the turn of the century, the evangelical Protestantism that had come to dominate the Texas religious scene promulgated “compassionate conservatism,” an ideology most notably espoused by George W. Bush. Promoting private, faith-based charitable institutions—many of which receive government funding—at the national level may be laudable. But as Wuthnow suggests, doing so may also give rise to ideas that reinforce the various forms of inequality that continue to beleaguer Texas, the South and American society as a whole.
Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-691-15989-8
Page Count: 662
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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