A delight for policy wonks and politicos, Rosenfeld’s insightful study of the development of political parties since World...
An analysis of mid-20th-century American political movements and the rise of an ideology-based party system that paved the way for the current state of partisan dysfunction.
It is generally understood that American political discourse is more partisan than ever: left vs. right, blue vs. red, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican. Pundits often wistfully recall a bygone era when the divisiveness between parties was less caustic, political ideologies were harder to distinguish, and bipartisanship was routine business in Washington, D.C. However, the degradation of civility between parties was by no means an accident. As Rosenfeld (Political Science/Colgate Univ.) points out in his well-researched and fascinating study of our partisan era, the development of strict party lines along ideological beliefs was initially a product of the Democratic revolution led by President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. After World War II, political operatives began to flesh out the concept of “responsible party doctrine,” which first codified the idea of more noticeable boundaries between Democrats and Republicans in a 1950 study entitled “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System.” Moving chronologically in sections divided by eras—e.g., 1945-1952, 1980-2000—the author expertly traces the development of this more parliamentary style of political organization through the postwar years and its defining moments, such as the Republican Goldwater insurgency of 1964 and the work of activist Michael Harrington to instill social consciousness into policymaking. In a scholarly but accessible text, Rosenfeld tackles the complex issues surrounding party identity, though, somewhat surprisingly, he pays little attention to contemporary politics. With an emphasis on “how we got here” rather “what do we do next,” the author’s analysis proves that the paralyzing political environment was created for a reason and can be changed.
A delight for policy wonks and politicos, Rosenfeld’s insightful study of the development of political parties since World War II is highly instructive for our current moment.Pub Date: Dec. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-226-40725-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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 Yorker staff 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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