A well-researched, if sometimes-overwrought exploration of an academic institution.
Kelley surveys the history of Maryland’s Tome School for Boys in this nonfiction book.
Founded in 1894 by Jacob Tome—a banker, politician, and one of the wealthiest men of the 19th century—the Tome School is one of the oldest schools in Maryland still in operation. Its original Port Deposit campus, founded as a nonsectarian boarding school, served generations of young men from wealthy families. The focus of this book, however, lies not on the Carnegies, Mellons, and other elites who attended the institution but on those of more “modest background[s]” who afforded tuition through an endowment that provided state residents a reduced rate. While not “pioneers of the industry,” writes Kelley, “their lives were no less meaningful,” as they grew up to become “unsung heroes of their time.” Rather than a top-down institutional history, Kelley’s history centers on the 1923 class of graduates from the grassroots level, arguing that it’s only through “personal biographies” and “intimate glimpses” that one can “grasp the true complexity and depth of an institution’s identity.” Thus, the narrative not only effectively provides a broad overview of the school in the context of the early 20th century, but also provides key details of students’ daily experiences, from their uniforms (“a crisp white shirt, a dark-colored tie, a well-tailored blazer, and neatly pressed trousers”) to their class schedules and course content. Backed by solid primary source research and a 20-page list of works cited, the book also features an ample assortment of photographs, newspaper clippings, and yearbook scans. Short vignettes about the 29 graduates focus clearly on how their Tome School experience prepared them for adulthood as lawyers, businessmen, and doctors. Overall, the work is unquestionably celebratory in nature, but readers will find that it’s occasionally over-the-top in its sentimentality; at one point, for instance, its students are heralded as nothing less than “the glue that held the fabric of society together.”
A well-researched, if sometimes-overwrought exploration of an academic institution.Pub Date: April 1, 2023
ISBN: 979-8389756557
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2023
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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