by Thai Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2004
One of the best forays into the Days of Rage—event, prequel, and sequel—to have appeared in years.
A pensive tale of the Old Left and the New, and of the political and personal struggles that shaped four generations of Americans.
Newsday reporter Jones was four when the FBI hauled his father, Jeff Jones, off to jail The reason? A fire inspector had seen pot plants growing near a window. But for the feds, drugs were secondary: Jones had been a fugitive for a decade, wanted for his role in the political violence of the Weather Underground. Thai Jones has gone by many pseudonyms, like River Phoenix’s character in the movie Running on Empty, which might as well have been made about the lives of his family—parents born into middle-class comfort turned armed revolutionaries, grandparents and great-grandparents who had variously learned their politics in the shtetl or on the Kansas prairies or in the Garment District. Thai traces these strands through the Depression—when, he writes of his grandmother Annie Stein, “There was a wide range of political opinion available: one could be a Socialist or a Communist”—and into the days of the Red Scare, when Annie’s husband refused to name names before HUAC. (Jones cites the FBI dossier on his grandfather’s crimes: In a six-year period, he had illegally parked, had a burned-out headlight, and run a stop sign, total fines: $10.) The narrative gathers power when Jones brings it into the time of his parents, who found each other at the end of a tormented path. Formerly a California surfer type, Jeff had become one of the leaders of the SDS splinter group that would become known as the Weathermen; its path turned ever more violent after the police murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago, but the Weathermen swore off attacks on civilians just about the time they went on the run. “No middle-class white American was educated for a career in constructing and operating an underground network for the purpose of overthrowing the government,” Jones writes, but his parents were willing students.
One of the best forays into the Days of Rage—event, prequel, and sequel—to have appeared in years.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-5027-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
Share your opinion of this book
More by Thai Jones
BOOK REVIEW
by Thai Jones
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
17
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
More About This Book
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.