by T.H. Watkins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 1993
A discerning, information-packed, and emotionally charged survey of America's crucible; by the author of the National Book Award-nominated Righteous Pilgrim (1990). As might be expected from a companion volume to an upcoming PBS series, the text is episodic and copiously illustrated. By themselves, the more than one hundred photographs and their long, illuminating captions do a fine job of conveying America's dark night. Many are the products of documentary and propaganda efforts by the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration—New Deal agencies that understood the power of the photograph to shape public opinion. Moving images of Hoovervilles, of the emaciated faces of migrant laborers and their families, and of the bloody conflicts of the union movement, Watkins explains, saturated the public consciousness and helped forge support for the New Deal. Reflecting these photographs by focusing on the human drama of the times, the author traces the era from the financial euphoria that led to the crash of 1929, and shows how the prevailing ethic of the upper classes—who were morally offended at the idea of ``handouts''—tied Hoover's hands long enough for FDR to be swept into office. But even with the ``alphabet soup'' of agencies created by Roosevelt's ``brain trust''—his first hundred days saw more legislation enacted than in any other period in our history—a rebound was a long time coming. Finally, Watkins makes clear, the struggle for economic relief—a struggle that included phenomena like the Bonus Army's march on Washington, the rising popularity of the Communist Party, and the fear of incipient class warfare—resulted in a new conception of government: government that would be a large and constant presence in American lives, promising a degree of security. Heartfelt and wide-ranging, and timely as well, as we continue to grapple with the nurturing sort of government put in place by FDR.
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-92453-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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