Well-written, riveting and bound to attract many readers.
Meticulous account of a long-overlooked racial clash during Reconstruction.
This is the first book on events of early May 1866, in Memphis, Tenn., in which 46 blacks were murdered during three days of “barbaric” rioting by lower-class whites. Drawing on a large archive of interviews conducted during federal investigations, Ash (History/Univ. of Tennessee; The Black Experience in the Civil War South, 2010, etc.) provides a wonderful overview of life in this “dusty, crowded, deeply divided city” in the early wake of the Civil War. Captured by federal forces in 1862 (a small military force remained), Memphis on the eve of the riots brimmed with tensions. The city was awash in war memorabilia, with photos of Robert E. Lee displayed in shop windows and talk of the Emancipation Proclamation as an abomination. Many whites resented the presence of black federal troops, as well as missionaries and the Yankees of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who worked to assist former slaves. The greatest antipathy existed between recently freed blacks (half the population) and Irish-American policemen and local officials. Triggered by clashes between black men and police officers, the rioting consisted of whites rampaging through black neighborhoods, assaulting residents, breaking into homes, and setting churches and schools on fire. Congressional investigators blamed the riot on “the intense hatred of the freed people by the city’s whites, especially the Irish—a hatred stoked by the Rebel newspapers.” Widely reported nationally, the massacre was seen as an omen of what might lie ahead for the postwar South and the country. Ash offers remarkable portraits of ordinary Memphians (grocers, firemen, soldiers, etc.) caught up in the tumult of their time.
Well-written, riveting and bound to attract many readers.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8090-6797-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.
A delightful new translation of what is widely considered the first work of history and nonfiction.
Herodotus has a wonderful, gossipy style that makes reading these histories more fun than studying the rise of the Persian Empire and its clash with Greece—however, that’s exactly what readers will do in this engaging history, which is full of interesting digressions and asides. Holland (In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, 2012, etc.), whose lifelong devotion to Herodotus, Thucydides and other classical writers is unquestionable, provides an engaging modern translation. As Holland writes, Herodotus’ “great work is many things—the first example of nonfiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history, the most important source of information we have for a vital episode in human affairs—but it is above all a treasure-trove of wonders.” Those just being introduced to the Father of History will agree with the translator’s note that this is “the greatest shaggy-dog story ever written.” Herodotus set out to explore the causes of the Greco-Persian Wars and to explore the inability of East and West to live together. This is as much a world geography and ethnic history as anything else, and Herodotus enumerates social, religious and cultural habits of the vast (known) world, right down to the three mummification options available to Egyptians. This ancient Greek historian could easily be called the father of humor, as well; he irreverently describes events, players and their countless harebrained schemes. Especially enjoyable are his descriptions of the Persians making significant decisions under the influence and then waiting to vote again when sober. The gifts Herodotus gave history are the importance of identifying multiple sources and examining differing views.
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02489-6
Page Count: 840
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
“Ideology is fairy tales for adults.” Thus writes economist and conservative maven Sowell in a best-of volume shot through with…ideology.
Though he resists easy categorization, the author has been associated with hard-libertarian organizations and think tanks such as the Hoover Institution for most of his long working life. Here he picks from his numerous writings, which have the consistency of an ideologue—e.g., affirmative action is bad, period. It’s up to parents, not society or the schools, to be sure that children are educated. Ethnic studies and the “mania for ‘diversity’ ” produce delusions. Colleges teach impressionable Americans to “despise American society.” Minimum-wage laws are a drag on the economy. And so on. Sowell is generally fair-minded, reasonable and logical, but his readers will likely already be converts to his cause, for which reason he does not need to examine all the angles of a problem. (If it is true that most gun violence is committed in households where domestic abuse has taken place, then why not take away the abusers’ guns as part of the legal sentencing?) Often his arguments are very smart, as when he examines the career of Booker T. Washington, who was adept in using white people’s money to advance his causes while harboring no illusions that his benefactors were saints. Sometimes, though, Sowell’s sentiments emerge as pabulum, as when he writes, in would-be apothegms: “Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can’t stop with just one”; “I can understand why some people like to drive slowly. What I cannot understand is why they get in the fast lane to do it.” The answer to the second question, following Sowell, might go thus: because they’re liberals and the state tells them to do it, just to get in the way of hard-working real Americans. A solid, representative collection by a writer and thinker whom one either agrees with or not—and there’s not much middle ground on which to stand.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-465-02250-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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