Had done more to illuminate the humanity of these heroes, his history would have had both merit and appeal. As it is, it is...
The saga of a rebellious priest and a black hero-soldier who both played leading roles in the drama of emancipation during the Civil War in New Orleans.
Ochs (Desegregating the Altar, not reviewed) a teacher and history department chairman at Georgetown Preparatory School, paints a densely ironic picture of the destiny of these two men whose lives cross as one is burying the other. Andre Cailloux, a captain in the Union Army, became the first black war hero when he led a hopeless charge against the Confederate forces at Port Hudson, Louisiana. Maistre, a priest whose shadowy past included mixed tales of sex and money, was nonetheless the sole Catholic voice of abolition in New Orleans in 1863. The French born-Maistre had developed a special ministry for black Catholics, and he defied his own bishop’s orders in agreeing to preside over Cailloux' funeral. But whatever large (and perhaps even the small) points Ochs is attempting to make about the Catholic clergy of the day or the trials of free blacks (such as Cailloux) who fought in the Civil War tend to get lost in a heavily footnoted and endlessly detailed swamp. The most basic necessity of such a story (i.e., a clear and vivid picture of Cailloux and Maistre) never emerges from the thicket of Ochs’s tangled narrative, leaving altogether too many unanswered questions about their lives. Indeed, it's never entirely clear if the two men ever met while Cailloux was still alive. Ochs writes that `by sharing the collective stories of our past we come to a better understanding of our common humanity and of our identity, both individual and societal.` This is true enough, and Ochs is obviously is quite sympathetic to the cause and the spirit of these two men, but it is also unfortunately true that he fails to breathe much life into them.
Had done more to illuminate the humanity of these heroes, his history would have had both merit and appeal. As it is, it is for specialists only.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8071-2531-8
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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