by Steven Hahn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2016
A compelling examination of the long, divisive road to America’s emergence, in 1919, as “the most formidable power in the...
A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian reveals America’s evolution into nationhood.
In a revisionist view of 19th-century America, Hahn (History/New York Univ.; The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom, 2009, etc.) examines eight decades of politics and culture punctuated by the 1860s conflict he calls the War of Rebellion. That war, he writes, was one among many other rebellions involving Indians, abolitionists, slaves, and disgruntled political groups that questioned federal authority. Hahn’s expansive, authoritative history synthesizes published works that comprise his 50-page bibliography and draws as well upon archival material. He mounts a persuasive argument that nationhood was not a concept shared by the many disparate states and territories, nor by its politicians. Although the Colonies broke from British imperialism, empire, not nationhood, served as a compelling economic and political model, as the country stretched west to California and south to Mexico, with tentacles into the Pacific and Indian oceans. In the Caribbean basin, Cuba was coveted for annexation. Hahn identifies roiling political tensions between the two major parties. Whigs, who evolved into Republicans and maintained strongest support in the Northeast, Midwest, and urban South, focused on developing the domestic economy and favored the exercise of federal power. Democrats, supported by Southern slaveholders, “stood for supremacy of state and local authority” and favored “aggressive geographical expansionism.” Indeed, Hahn says that the political identity of the South “developed alongside theories of empowerment that focused on states and households.” The author details the “costliest, most divisive, and most politically vexing” war with Mexico that resulted in the acquisition of Texas and the dubious purchase of the Louisiana Territory, which Thomas Jefferson had no constitutional authority to buy. Abraham Lincoln dared to articulate the “language of nation” at a time when states had affinity, at most, to a region. Hahn’s prose is sometimes burdened by overly long, clause-laden sentences, but his first-rate scholarship will appeal to knowledgeable readers.
A compelling examination of the long, divisive road to America’s emergence, in 1919, as “the most formidable power in the world.”Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02468-1
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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