The author’s research is commendable, but it swamps readers with too many details.
How an 1897 boxing match helped make cinema history.
This is a long book about a very short film. Admittedly, that movie, a document of a heavyweight title bout called The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, was once much longer—about three times longer than the 29-minute version eventually shown on June 10, 1997, at London’s National Film Theatre. But even the 90-minute version of the film, which no longer exists, would pale in comparison to Hawley’s (The Imjin War, 2014, etc.) densely written account, which weighs in at more than 350 pages. His subject is a little-known footnote to cinema history: the “fight film.” As motion pictures were being created—by everyone from Thomas Edison to Georges Méliès to the Lumières—two American brothers, Gray and Otway Latham, and their associate, Enoch Rector, realized there was money to be made by filming prizefights. Boxing was exceedingly popular at the end of the 19th century but prohibited in many states. Their idea was simple and savvy: given there were no laws (yet) against boxing films, they would find a pair of famous pugilists, put them in a ring, and rake in money by showing the footage all over the country. It was harder to pull off than they thought, though, and Hawley’s book painstakingly chronicles the enormous pre-bout preparation. The author splits his attention between the athletes and the cinematic pioneers to deliver an extremely well-researched tale of who did what, when, and how—and sometimes, even why. But this mountainous accumulation of detail is ultimately smothering. Readers don’t just learn about Eadweard Muybridge and his famous stop-motion films of Leland Stanford’s horses; they even learn the name of one of the equines (Sallie Gardner, if one wonders). In the same vein, Hawley doesn’t just describe a match between British fighter Robert Fitzsimmons (who would later appear in the titular film) and an Irish heavyweight named Peter Maher; he provides, literally, a blow-by-blow account. It’s not that his research is unwelcome; it’s simply overwhelming. By page 260, he’s only gotten to the first round of the big fight in Carson City, Nevada. So many writers give readers so little that it seems churlish to chide one who gives too much—but there’s a reason for the old adage “less is more.”
The author’s research is commendable, but it swamps readers with too many details.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Conquistador Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2016
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 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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