by Ron Powers ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1991
An extraordinary dissection by Powers (White Town Drowsing, 1986, etc.) of the plight and attempted resurrection of two small towns: Cairo, Ill., ``a violent, sorrowful little town'' perhaps breathing its last; and Kent, Conn., a ``prosperity-stricken'' rural town struggling to maintain its identity. Powers's towns have little in common. Cairo, at the southern tip of Illinois, has ``been dying for a hundred seventy years.'' Kent, a placid New England town, finds itself overwhelmed by the real-estate boom of the 1980's. One faces ``death by atrophy,'' the other, ``death by renaissance.'' Powers's meticulous examinations of the past, the hopes for revival, and the vivid personalities of each community reveal the towns' steady evolution to their current state. Following a ``breech birth'' in 1818, Cairo wouldn't build its first structure—prophetically, a tavern—for a decade. Described by Dickens as ``A dismal swamp...an ugly sepulchre,'' the town was populated by gamblers and prostitutes and assorted thugs. By the turn of the century, Cairo was a stronghold of white supremacy, culminating in well- publicized gunplay during the 1960's race riots. Current mayor Al Ross, leader of the neo-Nazi White Hats, is the most visible legacy of that era. Kent, in contrast, hasn't the colorful, volcanic history of Cairo; but therein, notes Powers, lies its problem. This scenic town in the Berkshire foothills has always attracted ``weekenders'' and ``summer people,'' particularly New York artists and writers who, while never actively participating in ``community,'' have added demand onto Kent's limited, fragile infrastructure and services. With the 1980's came the sudden influx of ``fresh money'' as developers and architects imposed their modernized, upscale vision of ``rural'' lifestyle on the community. The rapid overdevelopment left Kent with no real commercial tax base, and thanks to the onset of severe recession throughout New England, the town is now foundering. A revelatory work with a great deal to say about the mythology, history, and future of the American Dream.
Pub Date: June 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-57034-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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