If only Benedict Arnold had died sooner. Had he been killed at the Battle of Saratoga, he’d be one of the greatest heroes of American history, and “we’d celebrate his life as one of the best action stories we have.” Instead, he survived and went on to betray the colonies and die in shame. Sheinkin sees Arnold as America’s “original action hero” and succeeds in writing a brilliant, fast-paced biography that reads like an adventure novel. Opening with the hanging of Major Andre, the British officer who plotted with Arnold to turn West Point over to the British, the story sticks to the exciting illustrative scenes of Arnold’s career—the invasion of Canada, assembling America’s first naval fleet, the Battle of Valcour Island, the Battle of Saratoga and the plot with Andre, whose parallel narrative ends in a bungled mission, his execution and Arnold’s dishonor. The author’s obvious mastery of his material, lively prose and abundant use of eyewitness accounts make this one of the most exciting biographies young readers will find. (source notes, quotation notes, maps [not seen]) (Biography. 11-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59643-486-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
Salutary portraits in radicalism.
A gallery of historical troublemakers starting with Hannibal and ending with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fleischer chooses figures who worked, with high visibility but varying levels of success, to overthrow governments, liberate countries from foreign rule or fight for the rights of the oppressed. He arranges his entries by birth date, opens each with an old or period image and spins out career portraits in an occasionally breezy idiom: Julius Caesar’s heir Octavian was “ticked off,” Guy Fawkes was a man “jonesing to fight” Protestantism, and Elizabeth Cady and Henry Stanton were “an activist power couple.” Snarky picture captions (“Emma Goldman is not interested in your nonsense”) and sidebar references to pop culture further lighten the overall tone. Still, the author does not soft-pedal the brutality to which some of his subjects turned, however idealistic they may have started out, or the violent ends to which many of them came. Though the cast is largely European and/or male, it includes such less-well-known male freedom fighters as Metacom (aka King Philip), Maori leader Hone Heke and Daniel Shays and such women as Boudica and New Zealand feminist Kate Sheppard. Suggestions for further reading, a discussion guide and relevant updates will be available online; alas, there are no bibliography or source notes as such, nor is there an index.
Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-936976-74-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Zest Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
This is a book that cries out for publication as an e-book with links to the music (and fewer sidebars); till then, readers...
A biography of Ella Sheppard and the Jubilee Singers, the choir she co-founded.
Lowinger’s second book after Shifting Sands: Life in the Times of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad (2014) does a lot in 144 pages. While Sheppard’s life story and the Jubilee Singers’ history make up most of the main text, the author packs the first half of the book with graphics and sidebars about, for example, the routes and history of the European slave trade, important historical figures like Nat Turner, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain, and minstrel shows to contextualize what Sheppard and her choir faced as they brought the music of enslaved black people to the rest of the United States and the world. Each chapter is full of paintings, postcards, and other visuals and ends with a minihistory of one of the songs in the Singers’ repertoire. An archival woodcut displays the mask and shackles a slave might be forced to wear, for instance—chilling testimony indeed. An introduction explains that quotes are taken from Sheppard’s diaries or letters. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t do enough with the one thing that makes the subjects narrative-worthy in the first place: the music.
This is a book that cries out for publication as an e-book with links to the music (and fewer sidebars); till then, readers will have to make do by finding the music on their own. (maps, timeline, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55451-747-3
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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