A significant contribution to British working-class, abolitionist, and Atlantic history.
A little-known Jamaica-born antislavery activist at the radical edge of the British abolitionist movement.
Arriving in England as a teenager, “just one of thousands of Black men, many of them survivors of slavery in the Americas, who had settled in London following service in the British military,” Robert Wedderburn declared that he was the son of a prominent British colonist and an enslaved woman. Raised by a grandmother who vocally and vigorously resisted colonial authority, he emerged as a firebrand in the growing antislavery movement. As University of Exeter historian Hanley writes in this spirited biography, one of Wedderburn’s notable moments came when he loudly denounced reformer Robert Owen, whose social engineering projects amounted to slavery by another name whereby “the urban unemployed would be whisked away and engaged in wholesome, highly disciplined labor in the country, rendering them economically productive and removing them from the temptations of the big cities.” Wedderburn hated slavery, Hanley observes, but he also despised the “respectable” British establishment that slavery enriched and supported; in time he joined his abolitionist activism with the proto-Marxist revolutionary support of the demands of the working class writ large. Yet, Hanley observes, Wedderburn was a problematic figure in numerous ways, a sometimes violent criminal who was imprisoned several times, a seditionist who claimed as his motto, as he wrote, “assassinate stab in the dark.” Although he was largely written out of history, Wedderburn made significant contributions to the proletarian struggle as a polemicist and activist, championing the rights of sex workers and the indigent, carefully chronicling the fate of the Haitian Revolution and promising that it would one day arrive in the British colonies. In the end, Hanley holds in this swift-moving biography, Wedderburn “faced and overcame terrible material hardship to rise to a position of extraordinary prominence, an achievement that few other people could claim.”
A significant contribution to British working-class, abolitionist, and Atlantic history.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780300272352
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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 short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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