A smart though bumpy melding of frontier history and true crime.
A spirited, occasionally plodding account of a murderous Kansas clan.
It’s no In Cold Blood, but this history of a band of cutthroats proves that the epithet “Bloody Kansas” was not confined to the Civil War. Indeed, when searchers arrived at a cabin in the southeastern corner of Kansas in 1873, the veterans among them immediately recognized the smell of death. The place had been inhabited by a mysterious group of settlers who lured travelers indoors and then dispatched them, dumping their bodies nearby or in the cellar. “Their case,” writes Jonusas of the Bender gang, “is a stark reminder that buried beneath the myth of the outlaw are very real criminals whose violence left an indelible imprint on communities across the frontier.” That is certainly so, though the dramatic tensions in her story sometimes go slack when she cuts away for historical disquisitions. Nonetheless, she ably captures the dangers involved in the westward trek that so many of the Benders’ victims did not live to see through: “If travelers were lucky enough to escape death at the hands of the natural world,” she writes, “there were myriad bizarre accidents to fall foul of.” And then there were the Benders themselves, whose neighbors knew that terrible things happened whenever they were near but who nevertheless looked the other way as the list of victims mounted. One young woman, in particular, achieved a certain degree of untouchability: Even if “the more superstitious citizens of Labette whispered to one another that she was a witch,” the menfolk were taken with her. The narrative holds up until the author recounts how the Benders disappeared when the law began to close in; her extended theorizing about what happened to them goes too long. Still, it’s a story that, grisly and unsolved, fascinates on its own merits.
A smart though bumpy melding of frontier history and true crime.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-984879-83-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.
Tired of the lies about the 2020 election? Buckle up: Trump is just warming up, and his allies may be getting craftier.
“This is not a book about January 6, 2021. It is a book about January 6, 2025,” write legal scholars Lessig and Seligman. We are lucky, Lessig suggests, that John Eastman and his fellow plotters “picked the dumbest possible strategy for pursuing what we feared they were trying to accomplish”: namely, trying to convince Mike Pence that he had the constitutional authority to refuse to certify the results by which Joe Biden won the presidency. One might argue that the second dumbest strategy was to send an army of fascist goons to the Capitol to try to enforce Eastman’s argument. However, Lessig and Seligman argue, there are holes in the Constitution wide enough to drive a burning dumpster through, and they might allow an interested party to falsely claim victory in a closely contested race and win the election. The authors presume that any such gaming-the-system effort will come from MAGA Republicans, though they add that a Democrat could easily use the same tactics. Readers may need a law degree to follow some of the arguments, but others are quite accessible. One argument that Lessig has been mounting for some time, for instance, is that the winner-take-all method employed by most states for electoral votes needs to be replaced with an apportionment system so that the Electoral College count will align with the popular vote. On that score, the authors warn, the prospect of rogue electors—or more, rogue governors who control those electors—is very real, and numerous other threats could enable someone smarter than the last bunch to mount “a cataclysmic attack on our democracy.”
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780300270792
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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