by Scott Martelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 28, 2023
An expert portrait of a national turning point.
A compelling account of a pivotal year in U.S. history.
Veteran journalist Martelle, author of The Madman and the Assassin and Blood Passion, among other titles, provides a fine account of the run-up to “one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history.” He begins many chapters with excerpts from contemporary diaries, and readers will squirm at the level of suffering they reveal. The fact that many sufferers were white and middle class was a shock in a country historically indifferent to the sufferings of Black and working-class people. Inaction against the economic crisis was fostered by a political status quo long predating 1932, in which progressives and conservatives vied for influence in the Republican Party, and Democrats, who were strong in industrial northern states (including Franklin Roosevelt), frequently deferred to the reactionary South. Although the Depression and 1932 election feature prominently, Martelle’s coverage of lesser-known events enhances his vivid account. Like abortion today, Prohibition was so controversial that many politicians, including FDR, tried to avoid the subject. Conservatives (Hoover included) seemed unaware that Americans were growing tired of it, and Martelle delivers a long account of the repeal movement, largely led by the same women who fought for suffrage. Even readers aware of how badly Black Americans were treated in the Jim Crow South will be dismayed by the details. For example, Southern cities faced with growing unemployment fired their Black employees and replaced them with white workers, and white mobs attacked building sites and businesses to drive off Black workers and take their jobs. Martelle’s admiring depiction of FDR is appropriate for the president who faced and surmounted one of the nation’s greatest crises. Like many other historians, he portrays Hoover as an energetic technocrat with poor political skills overwhelmed by the economic collapse.
An expert portrait of a national turning point.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780806541860
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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New York Times Bestseller
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National Book Award Finalist
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton
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by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton
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