A well-crafted contribution to history “in a society where telling the truth about history makes you an outlaw.”
Far-reaching history of a forgotten Black civil rights pioneer whose short life offers timely lessons.
“Beware you guilty, both white and black.” So reads the note pinned to Wyatt Outlaw’s clothing by the Klansmen who lynched him on Feb. 26, 1870, in the small town of Graham, North Carolina. Outlaw’s sins were many, in the eyes of the white supremacists: He was, write Allen and Boggs, “a coalition builder who worked with white and Black citizens”—whence the warning—“and believed in justice and the rule of law.” Outlaw’s murder had lasting consequences as a prelude to the end of Reconstruction and the advent of Jim Crow segregationism. Allen, a native of Graham, began his research into Outlaw’s life by writing a play, its events connecting with his own life and the lives of all Black Americans. “I wasn’t meant to feel at home in Graham’s town square, where a Confederate statue still stands in front of our historic courthouse,” he notes—the courthouse where Outlaw was hanged before a crowd of 100. Yet the authors point to anomalies: North Carolina was the last state to secede to join the Confederacy and had a smaller caste of slaveholders than its neighboring states; its revanchism against Blacks and Radical Republicans came after the war (that Confederate statue dates to 1914) and endures. “Hate in this county is generational,” one activist remarks, and that’s just so: The authors connect Outlaw’s fate to that of George Floyd and other victims of racist brutality, not least those Black protestors in Graham terrorized by local police in 2020—adding, “and it’s hard not to connect the violence to the many instances of police and white supremacist violence faced by Reconstruction-era voting rights leaders.”
A well-crafted contribution to history “in a society where telling the truth about history makes you an outlaw.”Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781469689999
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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