A vivid narrative of a vital American event, but history buffs may not be convinced that Arnold was “America’s Hannibal.”
Maine’s Historic Site Specialist describes the epic 1775 march through that state’s wilderness by American troops commanded by Colonel Benedict Arnold.
Five years before he turned traitor to the Revolutionary cause, Arnold led his men on what would prove to be one of the most critical treks in the war for independence. Slogging through Maine in an attempt to assault the British at Fort Quebec, the soldiers faced freak blizzards and raging rapids. Starvation forced them to eat whatever they could find, including such delicacies as dog meat and boiled leather straps. Displaying uncommon stamina and a steely will to survive, an army weakened by illness, hunger and death arrived at Fort Quebec only to realize that it lacked the necessary numbers and equipment to effectively besiege the stronghold. Though the fort’s defenders were ill-prepared, Arnold was forced to wait for General Richard Montgomery to arrive with more men. The reinforced troops stormed the gates with little success; Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded in the initial raid. Unable to take the fort, Arnold settled for harrying the British by sea. He could not defeat their superior navy, but he stalled it long enough to prevent the ships from sailing south to reinforce the British armies in the colonies until the following season, a delay that contributed greatly to the American victory at Saratoga in 1777. Desjardin (Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine, 1996, not reviewed) recounts the march in descriptive, detailed prose studded with visceral imagery, but Arnold comes across as a frequently incompetent commander throughout the Maine march, making it difficult to credit the decisive impact his actions had. An epilogue asserting his overall importance to the war effort comes too late to counteract the book’s main thrust.
A vivid narrative of a vital American event, but history buffs may not be convinced that Arnold was “America’s Hannibal.”Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-33904-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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