A strong argument that deserves a spot in every Civil War buff’s library.
This thorough appraisal of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination addresses the theory that John Wilkes Booth was part of a multifaceted conspiracy directed by Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin.
Prindle (Revolution II, 2012, etc.) begins with the 1864 Dahlgren affair. After a failed Union raid on Richmond, Southerners published documents found on Union Army Lt. Col. Ulric Dahlgren’s corpse that mentioned a plan to destroy the city and kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet. Prindle sets aside the enduring debate over their authenticity but asserts that Benjamin, who directed the Confederate Secret Service, believed them to be genuine. Prindle argues that Confederates were involved in a plot to kidnap Lincoln, spirit him to Richmond, and ransom many prisoners, which then led to retributive schemes to decapitate the Union government. Through 17 brisk chapters, the author sketches the Confederate officials, undercover operatives, and civilians who advanced the conspiracy. He tracks clandestine activities from Virginia to Maryland to Canada, connecting dots while adding detailed context. Prindle effectively captures the complexity and chaos of the war’s final months: Battlefield losses mounted, Lincoln won reelection, Confederate desperation grew, and after Richmond fell, a kidnapping plot became untenable. Booth found his own plot competing with another to blow up a portion of the White House during a Cabinet session. Prindle identifies the only official who could have authorized either plan, other than Davis himself: Benjamin, who escaped to England with a fortune from the Confederate treasury. Prindle, an author of three novels, displays fluent storytelling, rendering familiar history as a page-turner. His abundant endnotes and synthesis of obscure details ably reflect his 30-year avocation of studying and lecturing about the Civil War as an independent scholar. A retired justice of the peace, Prindle’s granular accounting of the military tribunal, the executions of the conspirators, and the legal aftermath showcases his full skill set and typifies his discerning approach. Throughout, he gives competing views their due and carefully supports his own. Prindle’s conclusion relies on an “unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence,” as he admits, but readers need not be wholly persuaded to find it worthwhile reading.
A strong argument that deserves a spot in every Civil War buff’s library.Pub Date: March 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4556-2473-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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